


Faceless Killer

by Batsymomma11



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Superman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types, Superman/Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Language, Feels, Kidnapping, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Murder, NO CAPES, Non-Explicit Sex, Police AU, Slow Burn, Violence, references to rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-10-15 16:27:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 51,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17532188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batsymomma11/pseuds/Batsymomma11
Summary: Detective Bruce Wayne from the GCPD and detective Clark Kent from the MPD have been asked to create a joint task force in an effort to catch the John Doe Killer that has been ravaging their sister-cities. Aside from their long-standing animosity towards one another, it should be a breeze to work together. Besides, lives depend on them getting along.They never expected they'd trip headlong into a romantic entanglement that feels a lot more serious than even the killer they're chasing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a police AU with no capes. It's also heavy on the violence, gore, language, and overall killer aspects. Yes, there is going to be A LOT of romance between our detectives, but the explicit rating is primarily for the violence and overall content of the JD Killer. It's dark. 
> 
> I do not own DC or its characters. I do own this story. Enjoy!
> 
> Also, I've not added this to the Blark series because it is far darker than the rest of the fics I usually post there, even though it is technically a Blark fic.

            Sweat was dripping into Wayne’s eyes, down the back of his neck in itchy little trails, and it was driving him fucking insane. The heat was sweltering and the smell, God the smell, was so fucking bad it was making his head hurt. Making him feel sick to his stomach. And it took a lot to make Wayne sick at a crime scene. He’d seen a hell of a lot in his years with the GCPD.

            Standing over a body, drowning in the scents of human decay and blood wasn’t a new thing. Hell, he’d learned a thing or two about using Vick’s beneath his nose to help with the stench or chewing a piece of gum to settle his stomach. But there was something about finding a bloated body in the middle of a heat wave in Gotham that made it more grotesque than usual. Made his skin crawl and his eyes water as he tried to focus on taking it all in—in the most clinical way possible.

            Flies were swarming around the body, trying to get in their pound of flesh and he had to keep batting at his face to keep them away. He’d already filled a few pages in his notepad with observations, all eerily similar to about a half-dozen murders that had cropped up since May. The classic calling cards of the John Doe Killer were all the same. Wayne had no doubt that was who they were looking at.

            He crouched on the pebbly sand of the river, cocking his head as he tried to picture what sort of face used to be attached to the corpse. White, male, possible mid-thirties. Any dirt or grime had been washed away by the river, but it was entirely possible the victim was homeless. The JD Killer tended to target victims that were easy and without any ties. He always took a trophy, something physical from the victim. He always removed the face, crudely burned off the fingerprints, removed all the teeth. Any identifying information was shredded in attempts to make it harder to link a name with the missing face.

            That didn’t mean they hadn’t. Because they had.

            Enough missing person’s cases filed with similar matching descriptions and the GCPD had managed to gain a couple of identities to tag with their victims. The rest were unfortunately still John Does. All male. All around the same age.

            Hence, the moniker for Gotham’s latest serial killer.

            Only this time, their little pervert had traipsed too close to city lines and this body had been fished out of the river. Jurisdiction could go either way. MPD wanted the case, but the GCPD would fight them.

            And the rivalry would live on as it had for the better part of a hundred fucking years. Same shit, different day.

            _Speaking of_ —Bruce hissed out a breath as he saw a familiar person approaching him and stood, giving in to the urge to wipe the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve.

            The face, the plaid, with that stupid half-smile just managed to irritate him worse on an already irritating day. He had no interest in sharing his crime scene with Clark-fucking-Kent.

            “Looks like you’ve already gotten started. Without me.”

            Wayne slanted a look at the other detective who’d come to join him at the body and scoffed, “This case belongs to the GCPD Kent. I didn’t have to wait for your fuckin permission.”

            Kent rolled his shoulders, looking decidedly unbothered by the sweltering heat and the stench filling the space between them. “It’s undecided still. The MPD sent me down anyways. You know we’ve had a few murders like this over the last months on our side of the river too. We have just as much stake in catching this guy.”

            “Is that so?” Wayne growled, snapping his notepad closed, “Well, I’ll leave you to it then.”

            “So soon?” Kent’s eyes were dancing behind his black-rimmed glasses, clearly enjoying his ability to piss Wayne off without even doing much more than breathing. “I was hoping we could discuss the case. Share a few pointers over lunch.”

            Wayne lifted a brow, “Share a few pointers?”

            “Well, it’s looking like there might be rumblings of making a joint-task force. We might even be working together. On the same team for once.”

            Yeah, Wayne had heard as much. Had no interest in it.

            “I don’t work on a team.”

            Kent studied him for a moment, “No. But it isn’t about what you want, is it? It’s about catching a killer.”

            “Fuck you,” Wayne snapped, stepping around Kent on his way back to his unmarked cruiser. Kent didn’t bother following, which was a blessing, but Wayne could feel the other man’s eyes on the back of his sweaty neck all the way till the door. When he slammed the door and flipped on the A/C to full blast, he got a summons to return to the station.

            Chief wanted to speak to him. Which could mean only one thing--And Wayne didn’t think he was going to like it.

 

 

            “Chief, I don’t—Kent and I have a history.”

            Chief Borden looked about as thrilled with the idea of working with the MPD as Wayne felt. But he clearly wasn’t going to be told any different. And to some degree, Wayne understood that. He knew it made sense. Both the sister cities were being affected by the JD Killer and a joint-task force made sense. It could only help to pool their resources. Hell, they were lucky the FBI hadn’t decided to step in and take the entire case over themselves. It would be just like them to do it. Sticking their fat noses in where they didn’t belong.

            Wayne should feel lucky he was even being allowed to remain on the case. But he didn’t. He felt a little—trapped. Frustrated by his own inability to not let Kent get a rise out of him.

            “I’m aware of the rivalry between the two of you. It’s been legendary whenever we battle the MPD during our baseball season. But that isn’t going to affect this case, am I understood? You’re going to fully cooperate. Hell, you’re going to fucking lick Kent’s shoes if it means we catch this bugger. Am I understood, Wayne?”

            Wayne swallowed thickly, looking down at his black Nikes, feeling that sickness from earlier rise into the back of his throat. “Yeah. It’s understood Chief.”

            “Good. Now, get your ass over to the MPD station and make it snappy. I want you and Kent to meet up and discuss who you’d like on your teams. If you think you’ve been putting in long hours before all this, think again. The next weeks or God forbid, months, are going to feel like hell. But I need you on this Wayne. You’re my best detective. You close cases better than anyone.”

            Wayne nodded, “You can count on me.”

            And the Chief could. He always had.

            Wayne took a detour on his route to the MPD headquarters and stopped for lunch at a café near downtown. He poured over his notes, enjoyed the hum of air-conditioning, and reminded himself why he liked his job. Why he was fucking good at it. Because he always, always put the job first. He didn’t let something as petty as feelings get in the way.

            Sure, Kent made him—uncomfortable. Made him angry. Itchy.

            But he was just a means to an end. And he was a good cop. A good detective. Two heads, theoretically speaking, were better than one. Even if Wayne was fairly certain he could run circles around Kent when it came to investigative police work.

            By the time Wayne got to the station, he was firmly back in control of himself and feeling a lot less hostile. When Kent suggested they take a corner office to discuss leads, look over notes, before going down to the morgue to be briefed by the Medical Examiner, Wayne was feeling better about being forced into this task force.

            He and Kent could work together without making a fuss. Sure, they’d come to blows a few times over the years, particularly after a heated baseball game between their precincts, but they could let bygones be bygones for the good of the public.

            “You hungry?”

            Wayne blinked up from a file he’d been pouring over and frowned, “No. I ate on the way over here.”

            “Too bad. Cafeteria makes an excellent ham and cheese.”

            Wayne scowled and focused harder on the files. They looked almost identical to some of the cases sitting open on his desk. It was definitely the same killer. The fucker had been picking up victims on both sides of the river as far back as a year previous. Maybe longer.

            “Coffee?”

            “What?” Wayne blinked up, forced his gaze to meet Kent’s who was smiling over at him from across the table. “Oh—yeah. Sure.”

            “Black?”

            “Any other way to drink it?”

            Kent pursed his lips, “Cream and sugar too girly for you, detective?”

            Wayne scowled, “Let me guess, you like copious amounts of it?”

            Kent shrugged, moving to where a pot of burned, stale coffee was waiting on a folding table at the far wall. It would probably scald a hole into his stomach but at least it would have caffeine in it.

            “You know, if we’re going to work together, we might at least try to be a little friendlier,” Kent said softly, offering Wayne the cup of black coffee he’d asked for in a Styrofoam cup. Wayne took it gingerly and sipped at it a moment before speaking.

            “You broke my nose the last time we met, you remember that?”

            Kent’s eyes danced up to his, held a moment, “Hard to forget that howling. You sounded like a feral dog.”

            Wayne bristled, “You know what? Never mind. Let’s just—forget it.”

            “No, I’m sorry,” and Kent actually looked it for a moment, “You’re right. I’ve been a bit of an ass in our previous dealings. Granted, I think there is blame on both sides of the net. But still, I don’t want that to color this working relationship.”

            There was something about the word, relationship—that made Wayne feel like his stomach was dropping to his toes. Like he was sweating again even though he had goosebumps on his arms from how low they were keeping the A/C. “Right. Sure. Whatever gets the job done.”

            Another half-hour passed in relative peace before the boy scout piped up again and Wayne internally sighed, biting the inside of a cheek to prevent himself from snapping.

            “You really as rich as they say?”

            Wayne tipped his head, “Is my name Bruce Wayne?”

            “Well—”

            “Then yeah, I’m as rich as they say. And it has nothing to do with how I work as a cop. I think I’ve proven that after fifteen years hitting the streets.”

            “I wasn’t trying to insult you, Bruce.”

            Wayne stilled at the use of his first name and kept his eyes on the file in front of him. He wasn’t about to show Kent that it _bothered_ him to be addressed so personally when the two of them weren’t even friends. They were borderline enemies. Probably always would be.

            “It’s fine.”

            “It’s just—interesting, you know? I mean, you could have done anything. You could be anything. And yet, you chose to slum it with the regular people and work a job that pretty much sucks the majority of the time. But why? I mean, there are so many other ways you could have--”

            Wayne ground his teeth, “What are you getting at Kent? Are you seriously trying to psychoanalyze my life choices when we have mounds of paperwork to get through? Is now really the time?”

            _Is ever?_

            That earned him a sheepish look finally and Kent backed off, falling silent in favor of actually getting some goddamn police work done. Another hour later and they got paged by the morgue to come down.

            It was a silent trip, and Wayne was glad of it.

            The morgue was similar to Gotham PD’s. Just as filled with stainless steel, white tile scrubbed with bleach and antiseptic. The smell of death was heavy and musky when they walked shoulder to shoulder into the main room where the medical examiner was standing over their most recent corpse.

            “Hi, Franklin Cope, ME. Do I know you?”

            Kent spoke for him, “This is detective Wayne with the GCPD. He and I have been assigned on a joint task force for the JD Killer.”

            The medical examiner sighed, “It’s about damn time. This is the twelfth body found between the two cities.”

            “Politics gum up the works,” Wayne said quietly, looking down at the faceless body, “What can you tell us?”

            “Nothing much until I do a full autopsy. But I can tell you it’s by the same man. Same distinctive cutting with an obviously sharp instrument. My guess would be an actual scalpel.”

            “Could the killer be medically trained?”

            The medical examiner frowned, “It’s possible. But I would wager, no. He uses a scalpel, but it’s done frantically. Almost—sloppy. No clean lines.”

            “Any roots left of the teeth?”

            “I’m afraid not. Fingerprints are gone too. But I can tell you from bone structure, that he was likely in his mid to late thirties. Possibly early forties. He doesn’t look to have been in good health. Hair and nails are brittle. Maybe another homeless victim. Or a prostitute.”

            “Sexual assault?”

            “It looks that way. But if the victim was a prostitute? It would be hard for me to determine any damage done separately.”

            Wayne nodded, “Prostitutes are easier to lure into your car.”

            “The promise of a paycheck is hard to deny,” Kent added, frowning down at the victim.

            “I’ll have my full report to you as soon as possible. I know we’re working against the clock.”

            Kent sighed, “He’s been killing roughly once a month.”

            “Best of luck detectives.”

            “Thanks.”

            Wayne didn’t believe in luck. But he figured it couldn’t hurt their chances any either.

 

 

***

 

            Clark Kent was an averagely average guy. Sure, what he did in his day job was considered exciting if not, out of the norm, but in his home-life, he was absurdly normal. Boring even.

            He watched sitcoms after shift. Ate TV dinners and shared his bed with an overweight Tabby named Abigail. Clark wasn’t the stereotypical cop. Nor would you expect him to be if you met him outside of work. He was soft-spoken, inquisitive, kind. One of the friendliest men on the streets of Metropolis.

            Clark volunteered at a local homeless shelter in his free time. He spent countless hours reading any sort of fiction he could get his hands on until his eyes blurred. He sent money home to his parents who lived on the little farm he’d been raised back in Kansas, once a month.

            “Sure Ma,” Clark hummed into the phone pinched between his ear and his shoulder, as he rummaged in his cabinets for something to eat. It was close to ten and he’d still not eaten anything for supper. His stomach was damn near cramping. And he was godawfully tired. “Yeah, I’ll drive down next month. Work has been so busy.”

            _“I don’t know how you handle all that blood and gore Clark.”_

            “It’s part of the job Ma. I’m used to it.”

            _“I don’t like it.”_

            Clark smirked, reaching into the back of his stash of ramen to fish out a box of shrimp flavored noodles. It would do in a pinch. His mother would be horrified if she knew how badly he was eating. He’d lost a couple pounds in the last month because he’d been too busy to do a decent grocery shopping. Let alone fix something not microwaved.

            “How’s Pa?”

            _“Oh, you know. Works too hard. Complains you don’t visit enough.”_

            Clark smiled, dropping the noodles into a bowl then filling it with water. When he clicked the microwave shut and sat back to lean against the counter to wait, he could hear his mother yelling at the dog to hush up. Rusty was barking up a storm.

            _“Damn possums. Always running under the house and spooking the dog.”_

            “Let him out. He’ll be overjoyed to chase it off.”

            _“He might kill the poor thing.”_

            Clark shook his head, “Poor thing.”

            _“Everyone has their place. Possums too,”_ she sighed over the phone, sounding tired, _“I’m going to call it night, son. Get some rest. And be sure to visit soon. We miss you.”_

            “Sure thing, Ma. Goodnight.”

            Clark ate his noodles, took a quick shower, then bee-lined it for bed. He only made it down the hall before his front door was being banged on. Grumbling, Clark glanced longingly at his bed then switched directions to answer the door.

            No one bothered him this late at night. Which meant it was work related.

            But nothing could have prepared him for a rain-soaked Bruce Wayne standing at his door. Clark stared for a solid ten seconds before backing up to let the man in and when he did the detective looked equally shocked to be standing in front of Clark. Though he was the one who’d come to Clark’s apartment.

            “I uh—” Wayne swallowed, looked down at the steady drip of rainwater from his jacket to the floor, “There’s another body. I tried calling. Couldn’t get through so I just—your address was in your personnel file.”

            “It’s fine,” Clark said roughly, struggling to tear his eyes away from Wayne’s wet hair. It was an even deeper shade of black when wet and was dripping down his neck, into his white button-up. The front of which was almost translucent.

Suddenly, it was very difficult to swallow. Or make thoughts happen at all.

            And it wasn’t as if Clark wasn’t aware that he was attracted to Wayne. Because he’d been aware of it for years. Had studiously ignored it and then layered that attraction in vague animosity. It seemed to suit them. They bickered, hurled insults, and occasionally broke down into fist fights during their precinct baseball games.

            But having Bruce standing in his apartment, dripping from the rain and looking decidedly out of his element was a bit—jarring. It had Clark feeling like he should have changed out of his Loony Toons pajama pants or worn a sweater to cover up the ratty t-shirt. He felt a little—naked.

            “Let me just—let me go change.”

            Bruce nodded stiffly, glanced down at the water pooled at his feet again and scowled, “I’m sorry. I’m soaking your carpeting.”

            “It’s fine. It’s a crappy apartment. Don’t worry about it.”

            Clark dressed quickly. Tossing on a pair of jeans and a Metro-U sweatshirt. By the time he’d tugged on some sneakers and a cap, Bruce had found the dishrag from the kitchen and was trying to sop up some of the water.

            “You really don’t have to do that. It’s fine.”

            Bruce blinked up at him with eyes so gray they could be goose-feathers, then frowned again, “If I fucked something up, I like to fix it.”

            “It’s fine.”

            Bruce dropped the rag to the floor then stuffed both hands into his pockets, “You ready? We’re late enough as it is. I don’t want my ass handed to me because you were moving too fucking slow while primping.”

            Clark fought the urge to smirk and simply nodded, “Yeah, I’m ready.”

            “Good. My car is downstairs.”

            Bruce’s cruiser was nicer than Clark’s. Leather seats, stringently organized rubber gloves, extra notepads, and a hoard of other random things that Clark imagined could be helpful on the scene. He wasn’t nearly as organized, and it was a little humbling.

            By the time they arrived on scene, the blare of blue and red lights was a beacon in the deluge of rain. Any evidence would have already been washed away, even if they had a body. They’d already gotten DNA from a couple of rape kits on other victims, but that DNA wasn’t in the system. CODIS had no matches. The perp was a ghost.

            An umbrella was pretty much useless in the late summer gale and Clark squinted to see as they tromped through muddy puddles and down the river embankment to where yellow plastic lines had been drawn for the scene. The kill was fresh. Not bloated and water logged from the river, like the previous body. A younger male, clothes torn off. Body not even in rigor. It made Clark’s stomach jump when he saw the fresh streams of blood-red pooling beneath the dark hair. The face was gone, like all of them, but Clark could see the man had probably been attractive. He had good cheekbones, long limbs, slightly muscled. Maybe a prostitute. But the nails were manicured and aside from the missing teeth and fingerprints, he looked well-groomed.

            “A fucking waste,” Bruce growled at his side, dipping to stare sightlessly at the body, “He’s escalating.”

            “The other body was older. We don’t have a timeline of when he was killed.”

            “He’s escalating,” Bruce reiterated, glaring now up at Clark, “This guy wasn’t a nobody. He picked someone harder to get and used him. Raped him. Sliced and diced him right here on the riverbank in full view of possible witnesses. Took the face as his trophy.”

            Clark’s stomach rolled, his chest tightened, “The rain will have washed most everything away.”

            “He’s smart,” Bruce continued, eyes going distant, rain carving veins down his forehead and throat, “He would have picked tonight for a kill because it’s good cover. Half the city is drowning under the rain. Response times are slower by a solid two minutes. Even if someone heard the screams, he would have been able to make his escape in time.”

            “Yes.” Clark agreed.

            “God,” Bruce stood, then turned to the CSI who was trying desperately to put up plastic to preserve more evidence, “Do what you can.”

            “Yeah,” Clark thought the guy’s name was Harold. He nodded briskly, “Yeah, we will.”

            There wasn’t much to be done right away. The scene needed to be processed. So Clark and Bruce left and without speaking ended up at a diner nearby, sopping wet and silent as they sucked down hot coffee in a booth by the fluorescent sign flashing, _Open,_ in bright blue.

            “I want to catch this fucker.”

            Clark looked up from his drink, “We both do.”

            Bruce’s mouth twitched in a parody of a smile, “At least we’ve got one thing in common.”

            “I think we have a lot in common.”

            Bruce snorted, “Kent, I’m in a sour mood. Let’s not try and make friends tonight.”

            “Alright,” Clark shook his head, “Some other night then. Where we don’t talk about work. We could try to get to know one another. It would help us work better together.”

            “I have no interest in getting to know you better.”

            “But you do have an interest in closing this case, in catching the JD Killer.”

            Bruce gave him a venomous look, but Clark pushed on, determined to make the stubborn ass in front of him see reason. Sure, they didn’t like each other and Clark’s own attraction to the man made things a little complicated but aside from all that—they had a case to work. And if they were on friendlier terms, it would make working the case more productive. Trust built was worth a few barbs along the way, as far as Clark was concerned.

“And trusting one another, learning each other, will help us do that.”

Bruce’s mouth flattened, his hands tightening viciously on his mug, “Fine.”

            Clark resisted the urge to smile. But only just. “We could have lunch tomorrow.”

            “We’re going to be buried in casework for the next week with that body.”

            “All the more reason to start building a bridge between us. Besides, we have to eat, and we can’t work twenty-four seven.”

            Bruce’s scowl darkened, “Fine. But I’m fucking picking where we go. And it won’t be in Metropolis.”

            Clark raised both hands in surrender, “Fine by me. Besides, I haven’t seen your neck of the woods yet, and I’d like to.”

            Bruce took Clark back to his apartment an hour later. Clark wasn’t going to be able to sleep a wink having drunk three cups of coffee, but he felt better about working with Bruce Wayne than he had the day previous. He felt a hell of a lot better. And that was something.

            They’d work out the tension and the kinks between the two of them and then they’d catch their killer. That was the job. And the job came first.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the purpose of this AU, Bruce has adopted all of his kids, including Damian. I liked the flow of that better. 
> 
> Also, updates will probably be fast and furious on this particular piece because the muse is strong for it. I always strike when the iron is hot. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

            “Alf, please, I don’t have time. I need to go.”

            “Master Bruce,” Alfred was arranging roses on the kitchen island with his back turned but his voice sounded no less stern. No less chastising. “You can’t possibly expect to have a productive day without a proper meal in your stomach. At this rate, you’ll waste away.”

            “Waste away?” Bruce questioned sarcastically, slumping onto the bar stool beside his second oldest son. He had yet to say anything and likely wouldn’t for another half-hour, long after Bruce was gone for the day. Jason’s eyes were puffy, and it was hard to tell if they were even closed or open.

            “I had a cup of coffee.”

            “Black coffee has no caloric value to speak of.”

            “Then I’ll grab a protein bar. If I don’t leave in the next five minutes, I’m going to be late. I’ve got a full day at work.”

            “I’m certain that you do.”

            But apparently, that meant absolutely nothing when it came to who would win this particular fucking argument. Bruce had been having these sorts of battles with his butler for as long as he could remember.

Alfred always won.

            In the end, he rummaged around in the bread box, found a bagel and started scarfing it down over the sink. Alfred kept quiet, but there was decided judgment happening at his back. Jason was still slightly comatose and the only child out of his four that had decided to come down before six am. It wasn’t an abnormal occurrence for Bruce not to lay eyes on any of them until the evening hours.

            Dinners in their house were nothing like breakfast. Squabbles spilled drinks, and bellowing at high volumes was traded for the civility and relative quiet of solitude. Bruce looked forward to his evenings far more than he did his mornings. He liked the noise that came with having a full house.

            Grabbing his windbreaker, Bruce jogged out the door off the kitchen to the garage and left with a mouthful of bread and a to-go cup of coffee. Alfred merely lifted a brow at him and bid him a good day.

            It was how Bruce started most days.

            His drive into the station was only about twenty minutes but it felt long with traffic and by the time he’d pulled into the parking lot, he was chomping at the bit to work. His mind was a nest of ideas. Angles to work. Avenues to run down.

            Bruce wasn’t sure how the switch happened in his mind. He wasn’t sure how through all the years he’d worked as a cop that he was Bruce at home and Wayne at work, but it always happened. Between the manor and the precinct, the shift happened, and he put on a different mask. A new face.

            At work, he was Wayne and he didn’t take shit from anyone. He wouldn’t dream of being bossed around by a seventy-year-old man for eating too little. Wayne was a tight-ass, but he got the job done because his focus was unrivaled. Nothing got in the way of the job. Ever. At home, he was Bruce. Father of four, philanthropist, concerned Gothamite, and a sympathetic ear. He was quiet but fair. Softer than anyone would believe within his own four walls.

            The difference between the two men would be enough to make anyone pause.

            But it worked well for Wayne. It always had. He liked to keep the two aspects of his life as separate as possible.

            Wayne spent the morning compiling a rough suspect profile of their killer. They were looking for a white male, mid to late thirties, with a leaner build and average height. He would look non-threatening to almost any other male he encountered but was likely off-putting to some degree. Their man likely suffered some sort of abuse as a child, almost certainly from a strong male figure in his adolescence. He was using his victims as a totem for finding his identity. He kept the faces as his trophies because they meant the most to him. When he took a face, he was taking back everything he’d lost. He was finding himself.

          On the surface, the JD Killer had the hallmarks of someone like Jeffrey Dahmer. He killed white males as a punishment for what was done to him as a child. But that was where the similarities ended. The JD Killer ended his victims via strangulation, before taking his anatomical trophies and defaming the bodies. Dahmer also sexually assaulted his victims, but they were always gay males and not always white. He also dismembered and/or ate his victims. Something they had no indication was happening with the JD Killer. Wayne suspected the man was keeping his trophies to wear in private. He was probably trying on the faces. Soon, that wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to find something more visceral to feed the monster.

          The means would change. Killing grounds weren’t likely to alter, but it _was_ likely that the

           JD Killer was going to start either doing something else to the bodies, more abuse, likely sexual in nature, or he was going to become more risky in how he was poaching his victims. The escalation was the key to catching him. A serial killer liked patterns and rituals. But they also became sloppy as their acquisitions grew higher and the lust for _more_ grew with it.

            Wayne was so wrapped up in the work, deep in thought, that he didn’t surface until a pair of jean-clad legs broke his concentration, rudely invading his space. He didn’t know if he’d been at his desk madly typing for hours or days. It could have been either, for all the disorientation he suddenly felt.  

            Wayne glared, looked up from his laptop and the nearly completed profile he’d been compiling, and then stared stupidly at the owner of those legs. Kent.

            “What are you doing here?”

            “We have a lunch date.”

            Wayne blinked, his stomach bottoming at the open amusement on Kent’s face. “What the fuck are you talking about Kent? I’ve got work to do.”

            “Yes, we both do. But we agreed to lunch. And you said someplace in Gotham—so here I am.”

            It took him a solid minute of counting in his head not to lose his cool and start cussing the farm boy out. When he thought his voice might come out semi-professional, he attempted to speak again.

            “I’m busy. It’s a bad time.”

            “I’ll make an exception and you can brief me on what you’ve been working on for the drive.”

            “Kent—”

            “I won’t take no for an answer and you know how obstinate I can be.”

            “Fucking prick,” Wayne mumbled under his breath, saving and closing his files on the laptop. “Just give me a minute.”

            Kent waited in the folding chairs by the interrogation rooms and Wayne strode right past him when he was finished, heading out the doors without looking back. Kent was fortunate he didn’t have to jog to keep up because of his long-ass legs. Otherwise, Wayne would have happily left him in the dust and eaten a hot dog off a street vendor for expediency.

            He was in no mood to socialize.

            Least of all with Kent.

            “So—” Kent had caught up to him and held the elevator door open for him, “What were you working on?”

            “Profile.”

            “I saw you already had one.”

            “Every new body gives me more information about the killer. I was updating my files and adding to them. The profile morphs a little each time.”

            “And?”

            Wayne lifted a mocking brow, “What? You don’t have a background in criminal profiling too?”

            Kent snorted, “You do?”

            “As a matter of fact, I got my master’s in criminal psychology and am working on my thesis for profiling. Specifically, serial killers.”

            “Wait,” Kent was frowning, his brows drawn low over those cornflower blue eyes, “You have a master’s degree?”

            “Yes.”

            “And you’re working on your…”

            “Doctorate.”

            Kent’s mouth fell open as the elevator doors pinged. Wayne didn’t bother waiting for him to catch up. Kent would follow after he managed to close his fucking mouth. It was more than a little rewarding to have stunned the detective.

            “Shit,” Kent was hissing behind him, jogging up beside him as Wayne pushed out the front doors and headed straight for his car. “Wait up, damn it.”

            “Why?”

            “Because I’m still trying to wrap my head around this and I need a goddamn minute.”

            Wayne stopped abruptly then whirled to pin the other man with a glacial stare, not an ounce of softness in it.  

            “What is so difficult to understand, Kent?”

            “What the hell are you doing as a detective in the GCPD when you’re working on your doctorate? I mean, shit Bruce. You could be doing anything.”

            Wayne felt his heart skip, his stomach tightening at the earnest confusion in Kent’s eyes and he almost, almost, felt something other than irritation with the man. But it faded quickly when Kent kept talking.

            “Why haven’t you moved on to the FBI or gone higher up? Don’t you think you’re wasting your time here?”

            Wayne shook his head, anger making his movements jerky. “I like Gotham.”

            “Gotham? Really?”

            “It’s a good city. There are still good people here.”

            “It’s Gotham. Nobody loves Gotham.”

            “I do,” Wayne snapped, moving again at an even faster clip in the direction of a hot dog stand. It was going to be a vendor after all. His pick, right? Kent was going to get his lunch, but it wasn’t going to be anything fancy. When Kent realized where Wayne was headed, he merely lifted a brow but said nothing as Wayne ordered a couple of hot dogs with chips.

            They took their lunch to the fountain in the middle of the GCPD courtyard and dove into the food like starved animals. Wayne hadn’t realized how hungry he was.

            “So, you live in the city.”

            Wayne shrugged, “City skirts.”

            “In what? A penthouse?”

            “A house.”

            “A house,” Kent looked dubious. “Like a really big house?”

            Wayne wiped the mustard off the corner of his mouth then sighed, “Like a really big fucking house Kent. A manor. Alright? Happy? I told you I was rich. I’m Bruce Wayne. The manor has been in my family for generations. It’s where I live.”

            “That’s—that’s nice.”

            Wayne snorted, “Yeah. It’s great.”

            “Where’d you go to school?”

            “What is this—twenty questions?”

            Kent crunched thoughtfully on a potato chip then leveled him with a curious look, “I told you I wanted to get to know you better. It’s lunch. And don’t think I don’t know what you were trying to do by making it a hotdog stand. I still get to ask questions.”

            “Fine, let me make this easy for you then, shall I?” Wayne crushed the empty paper from his hotdog in a fist, “I’m a very private person. I keep my life out of the public eye as much as possible, especially my kids and I don’t like to talk about myself. Pretty much at all. I work because I like it. Because it makes me fucking happy. Alright? And even though I don’t need to do it, I still do, because I made a promise a long time ago that you wouldn’t know the first thing about nor would I ever fucking tell you about. Is that good enough? Can I get back to work now?”

            Kent wasn’t looking at him. He was looking at his lap, at the cement covered in breadcrumbs beneath their shoes. Anywhere but Wayne’s eyes and it was disconcerting. The sound of city traffic hustling in the background was a soft buzzing in his ears.  

            “You’re married?”

            “What?”

            “Kids—I—you said you have kids?”

            Wayne blinked at him, “Yeah? What the fuck does that matter?”

            “I—are you married?”

            “No. I’m not.”

            Kent’s gaze lifted and if Wayne wasn’t too busy trying to figure out why that look had his toes curling in his sneakers he might be thinking the man looked relieved.

            “Divorced then?”

            “No. Never married. I’m single and I don’t really date. I don’t have the time or the inclination. My life is complicated enough as it is.”

            “Oh—are they—”

            “For God-sake Kent. They’re adopted, OK? None of them are biological.”

            “How—” Kent stammered a moment, then corrected himself as a scarlet blush stained him clear to the tips of his ears. And damn if it wasn’t just a little bit endearing on the bumbling oaf. “How many kids do you have?”

            “Four.”

            “Four?”

            Wayne tipped his head to the sky, a pale gray, and sighed loudly, “Dear God.”

            “It’s not a bad thing Bruce, I just—I never pegged you as the daddy-type.”

            “First of all,” Wayne growled, narrowing his gaze on Kent, “They don’t call me daddy. Only one of them even calls me Dad and that’s the youngest, who’s five. And second of all, I didn’t realize there was a type for raising children.”

            “Jesus Bruce, I’m not trying to insult you with everything I say. I’m just genuinely shocked. OK? You just—you seem like the type to hate puppies. And no one hates puppies. So when I try to picture you as a dad, my mind kind of feels like it’s imploding.”

            Wayne shook his head, pushing to a stand, “Well, this conversation has been extremely enlightening. And I have a profile to finish. I’ll see you later Kent.”

            “Wait,” Kent’s hand was on his bicep, burning through the sleeve of his Henley so abruptly it caught Wayne in his tracks. Made his breath back up in his lungs and that strange curling sensation in his toes return full-force. He blinked down at the hand on him—long fingers, wide palms—then found himself staring nakedly back at Kent for far too long before the silence was broken “I really didn’t mean to upset you, Bruce. Seriously. I am just trying to get to know you.”

            _Clark-fucking-Kent. And those damn pleading eyes._

            “I—” Wayne swallowed, felt like he needed a gallon of water all the sudden then cleared his throat, “I get it. It’s fine.”

            “I’m single and don’t date much either. I have a cat named Abigail who eats too much. I grew up in Kansas and I visit my Ma and Pa every other month. I’m boring but I work hard. And I want us to work well together. I want this to work.”

            _Make what work?_

Wayne’s brain felt stunted all the sudden. And all he could stare at was Kent’s mouth. His eyes. The buzzing in his ears was much louder and he was suddenly lightheaded.

            _Breathe._

Wayne shook Kent’s arm off, took a cautionary step back and then finally tore his gaze away from Kent’s. Immediately the air rushed back into his lungs and he felt like he was able to get his balance. “Great. I’m glad we had this little heart to heart. But I’ve got fucking work to do. And you’ve got your own.”

            “Right,” Kent nodded, “I’ll email you when I get the ME report from the body.”

            “Good.”

            “And I’ll send over my roster of team member picks.”

            Wayne ran his tongue along his teeth, ready to be done. Ready to pretend like whatever the hell had just happened, did not, in fact, just happen. “Fine. I’ll do the same.”

            They didn’t say anything else by way of a goodbye. And Wayne was shame-faced to realize he was too damn relieved to escape into the police station without Kent tagging along. But he felt those inquisitive eyes watching him, wondering about the same things he was.

 

 

 

            “How was work? How’s the case going?”

            Bruce had spent the last ten minutes cutting his steak into tiny useless pieces instead of actually eating. He wasn’t hungry. Not at all. “What?”

            Dick, his oldest and arguably the most affable of his sons, was staring at him, watching him carefully. Probably seeing too much. “I asked about work. How’s your case?”

            “It’s fine.”

            “I heard Clark Kent has been put on the task force with you. The rumor mill has been running like mad.”

            “Yes.”

            “So, you two buried the hatchet?”

            Bruce tried not to think about the afternoon, about Kent’s hand on his arm and the heat of that grip that made him so flustered and failed for an infuriating minute. He needed to not talk about this.

            “Yes. It’s buried. We’re focusing on the case.”

            _And only the case._

            “We saw they found another body on the news,” Tim mused over his glass of water, eyes sharply assessing as they found Bruce.

            “Yes, we found another body. But I don’t think this is the right type of talk for dinner,” Bruce jerked his chin at Damian who was happily mashing his potato and steak into a brown pulp. Apparently, he wasn’t going to be eating supper either. Alfred would be disappointed.

            He didn’t _look_ as though he was paying their conversation any attention but that meant nothing. The boy was incredibly smart and almost always listening. Especially when he didn’t look like he was.

            “Sorry,” Timothy apologized softly, moving back to his dinner.

            “Where is Jason?” Bruce frowned at the table, “Isn’t he supposed to be home from work by now?”

            “He’s working the late shift.”

            “I thought we talked about him not doing that anymore.”

            “B, come on. Jay is eighteen going on nineteen. He can pick and choose what jobs he takes and how he takes them.”

            Bruce poked at his steak some more, felt his brain ache at the myriad of things which could happen between now and midnight then closed his eyes to block the images. Occasionally, working for the police department meant he knew things about the seedier side of life which he should not. It made worrying about his children worse. Because he knew what could happen to them.

            He’d adopted them all from various walks of life. And each of them had tragic stories, much like his own. He supposed that was what had drawn him to them in the first place. Grief calls to grief. Pain to pain.  

            Dick’s parents had been murdered when he was only eight-years-old. His story had been too close to Bruce’s for Bruce not to act. For him not to feel an immediate connection when he’d come on the scene and found himself face to face with the pools of red blood beneath a pair of adults that never should have been taken so soon. He’d known right away that Dick was meant to live with him when he’d seen him.

            After Dick, taking in more hadn’t felt strange. It had felt—right. Natural even.

            Alfred had never said a word against it.

            Jason was a jail-bound delinquent who’d tried to steal the rims from his cruiser. His mother had been a druggie, his father--long gone. He’d been dodging the foster system until Bruce convinced him to work with the system to allow Bruce to become his foster-father. After Jason’s mother had signed away her rights, Bruce promptly adopted him. Jason had been his ever since he was eleven. But he called Bruce B, much like Dick.

            Timothy was a special case. Soft-spoken, smart, and extremely introspective. He could solve almost any equation he was given. Someday, he’d run the Wayne legacy all by himself. He was certainly gifted enough for it. Timothy had been a runaway from an abusive home. When he was only fifteen, he’d gotten himself legally emancipated and Bruce immediately offered to take him in. It only took a year for Bruce to convince him his place was with them. Bruce adopted Tim shortly after.

            And then there was Damian. Sweet, feisty, terrifying, Damian. Damian who had been left on his porch as an infant with a note saying the child was his. As it happened, after a DNA test, Bruce found out Damian wasn’t actually his. That hardly mattered to him. He’d already fallen in love like he was prone to do with lost souls and Damian became his too.

            Bruce would never do differently. He’d never change it or go back.

            “B? You OK?” It was the worry in Dick’s voice that snapped Bruce back to the dining room.

            “Yes,” he tried a smile and knew it was a little weak, “I’m fine. It’s just been a long day.”

            “I’ll bet. Alfred said you left before six.”

            “Well,” Bruce shrugged, “you know what sort of pressure the Chief is putting on all of us.”

            “I know, Haven PD has been abuzz with leaked bits and pieces,” Dick agreed, mouth flattening, “If you ever want me to stay at the manor for a while again, I’d be happy to help out.”

            That got Damian’s attention. His youngest absolutely adored Dick. “Really?”

            Dick shrugged, “Why not? It’s a bit of a drive to Haven from here, but not too bad. Besides, I like hanging out with all of you.”

            Tim snorted, “Right.”

            “I mean it, short stack. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

            Damian frowned, “Don’t talk like that. I don’t like it.”

            “Sorry Dames,” Dick offered a commiserating smile, “How about I take you out for ice cream and you can tell me about school? I hear kindergarten is kicking your butt a little.”

            Damian scoffed, “It’s not hard! It’s not hard at all! I just don’t like the other kids.”

            Bruce blew out a breath, “It’s a big adjustment. For everyone. But it will get better.”

            Damian was diagnosed with Asperger’s at a young age and it seriously affected his ability to socialize in a school setting. They were fumbling their way through it all but Bruce suspected they’d need to get more therapy underway and bring back their behavioral consultant from the year previous.

            Dick lifted a brow, “Okay, maybe no ice cream?”

            “No,” Bruce shook his head, “It’s fine. Go ahead and take him out. But he has to be in bed by eight.”

            Damian opened his mouth to argue and Bruce cut him off. “Bed by 8. You need your sleep, Damian.”

            “Fine.”

            Tim and Bruce finished dinner quietly, then moved to the entertainment room to watch a couple episodes of Tim’s latest obsession on TV. It was a tradition that meant they shared a bowl of popcorn, propped up their socked feet on the coffee table and snuggled beneath a blanket that was as old as Bruce was. If Tim pressed as close to Bruce as he could manage without actually sitting in his lap, Bruce gave no indication that he was even aware. He kept his arm slung over Tim’s shoulders, laughed at the right parts of the show and commented when it was expected. But mostly, he just enjoyed his alone time with Tim.

            Around nine, Tim started to nod off and Bruce sent him off to bed. By ten, Dick said his goodbyes and Bruce was left alone to wait up for Jason.

            Jason didn’t get in until almost one.

            When he snuck into Bruce’s bedroom and flopped over on the bed beside him, Bruce reached over and patted his head in pity. Bruce was barely keeping his own eyes open. He was mostly glad Jason had made it home safe and he didn’t have to send out a search party.

            “Fuck.”

            Bruce chuckled, “Not what you expected?”

            “I hate the late shit. I’m so exhausted I can’t even see straight.”

            “Weren’t you up with me this morning?”

            “Yeah, I think?” Jason yawned loudly, sitting up to peer over at Bruce in the murky darkness of his bedroom, “I don’t remember much.”

            “Maybe you should consider a different line of work.”

            “I like my job.”

            “Yeah?” Bruce asked softly, “All of it? Because you know you don’t need to be working Jay. You could go to school. If you wanted.”

            Jason shifted on the bed, “I don’t know. I wanted this year to get my head on straight. To see what I wanted to do…”

            “I understand.”

            “Yeah sure, old man. I can hear you judging me from over here. It’s loud and fucking clear.”

            Jason had always had a vulgar mouth. Bruce had never bothered to correct it. He wasn’t exactly the poster child for decent language choices himself.

            “Jay—I’m serious.”

            “So am I. I’ll go when I’m ready. Until then, it’s this security gig. It pays well.”

            “It does.”

            “I should be able to get my own place in a few months.”

            Bruce closed his eyes, forced himself to breathe through the sudden stinging ache in his chest and then nodded weakly into the dark. “Yeah. That’s great Jay. I’m proud of you.”

            Jason snorted, “You sound like you swallowed a frog.”

            “Give a man a break.”

            “Yeah sure,” Jason groused, but he sounded amused and pleased with Bruce. “Mind if I just sleep here? My bedroom feels like it’s miles away.”

            Bruce shook his head, sliding down into the bed, patting the comforter at his side, “You know I don’t care.”

            “Sweet. Scoot over.”

            Bruce obeyed silently, rolled to his side and promptly fell asleep once he heard Jason’s soft snore filling the room. Everyone was home and safe and protected.

            There was the flicker of feeling that that wasn’t the case for everyone. That, someone, was even now being picked by the JD Killer and being hunted. But it was brief and not strong enough to prevent sleep.

 

 

***

 

            Clark spent Sunday helping a neighbor move. When he was finished, he actually forced himself to make a grocery list and then go buy food because he was starting to lose enough weight his belt wouldn’t cinch any tighter. If he didn’t gain weight over the next couple of weeks, his Ma was going to have a field day during his next visit.

            Arms loaded with groceries, slicked with sweat from the hike up the stairs, Clark barely managed to get inside his apartment before his phone started to ring. He answered on the last ring, out of breath and only ripped one of the paper bags of groceries in the process.

            “Detective—Kent.”

            _“You alright detective_ _Kent?”_ said a familiar sarcastic voice in reply.

            Clark blew out a frustrated breath and leaned into the kitchen counter to try and calm the sudden uptick in his pulse. “Yeah, I’m fine. You just caught me unloading groceries, Bruce.”

            There was an irritated huff over the line, then, _“Why the fuck do you keep calling me that?”_

            “Calling you what?” Clark closed his eyes and slowed his breathing incrementally, “Bruce? That’s your name, isn’t it?”

            _“It’s my first name. No one calls me that.”_

            “Not even your kids?”

            _“No.”_

            “What do they call you? I mean, you said they don’t call you dad, so what do they call you? Mr. Wayne?”

            _“No. They—they call me, B. Look, Kent, I didn’t call you to socialize. I called to talk about the ME report. I just got the email and I wanted to go over some of it with you.”_

            Clark glanced at his payload of food, “I could cook dinner.”

            There was a long pause on the line, long enough Clark wondered if Bruce had merely hung up.

            _“I only have an hour to spare. Sundays are usually for the family.”_

            Clark smiled, working to keep it from his voice because damn it all if that wasn’t adorable. If that didn’t make Bruce Wayne more interesting, more attractive.

            “That’s fine. I’ll just put on a pot of coffee. When can you come over?”

            _“I’m already on my way. I should be there in fifteen minutes.”_

            “Presumptuous of you.”

            Bruce laughed, and it was the first Clark had heard come from the other man that sounded genuine, _“Not really, Kent. I work hard. Try to keep up.”_

             Clark got his groceries put away, put on a pot of coffee then strongly considered changing clothes. He didn’t want to make a fuss of his appearance, because really, it had nothing to do with the case. But he also didn’t particularly like that the last time Bruce had been to his apartment he’d been dressed in Loony Toons pajamas and looked like a hobo.

In the end, Clark left good enough alone and kept it simple with his khakis and Voltcom t-shirt. It was Sunday after all. He’d been running errands all day. He would be expected to look like it.

            Bruce didn’t look like he’d been running errands at all. Not. At. All.

            The minute Clark opened his door and found the other man already scowling at him in a tailored suit and tie was the moment that all the moisture in Clark’s mouth dried up. He tried not to stare, but really, it was impossible and managed only a vague gesture to invite Bruce inside.

            “Staring is rude.”

            “I—” Clark swallowed thickly, forced his gaze to his little kitchenette table, “You look different. Dressed like that.”

            “Rich, you mean?”

            “Well, I mean—yes. Rich.” _Attractive._

            Bruce shook his head, gliding into Clark’s shabby kitchen with an air of belonging there. He found the pot of coffee on the counter and started rummaging in Clark’s cabinets for a mug without even being asked. It might have been rude on anyone else. In Bruce’s case, it came off as relaxed confidence. Ease.

            It made the ball of hot lead in Clark’s middle fester deeper.

            “Did you—bring the report?”

            Bruce looked over a shoulder as he pulled down a second mug and started to fill it. “I told you it was emailed. If you have a laptop, we can go over it at your table.”

            “Oh, right. Yes, of course.”

            “Cream and sugar?” Bruce asked quietly as Clark strode into the living room and unearthed his laptop from beneath the couch.

            Clark blinked dumbly at him for a moment then smiled, “You remember how I take my coffee.”

            “It’s not a compliment to you. I remember everything Kent. It’s why I’m good at my damn job.”

            “Then, yes, please. Cream and sugar. _Copious_ amounts of it.”

            Bruce’s mouth twitched, the glimmer of a smile, but then flattened as he finished prepping the coffee while Clark booted up his computer. He’d been cc’d on the email from the ME and he opened the file as Bruce came to sit beside him.

            Bruce even smelled expensive. He was wearing some cologne he didn’t usually wear when on the job. And it was making Clark a little flushed. He prayed to god that Bruce didn’t notice.

            “Are you going somewhere after this?”

            Bruce scowled at him, “I’m going home.”

            “You’re in a suit.”

            “I wear one on occasion. Why does that fucking matter?” And there came the cuss-words, completely ruining the image of upper-class wealth. Clark liked this version of Bruce better anyways. He could relate to it easier.

            “It doesn’t particularly, except it looks like you’re going somewhere else. That’s all.”

            Bruce looked down at the table, shrugged a shoulder, “I have a small party at the manor for some of my investors to attend.”

            “I thought you said Sundays were for family.”

            “They are,” Bruce’s jaw flexed, “But I have obligations and besides, the boys will all be attending too.”

            “Hmm,” Clark mused, looking back to the screen, then clicking it open. “COD was strangulation.”

            “Like the others,” Bruce leaned forward, and any trace of the other man Clark had been conversing with faded in favor of the detective. Clark could almost see his mind whirring.

            “You were right,” Clark bit his lip, shaking his head, “He’s escalating. Our victim was younger than the others. Definitely better groomed and clean. He was also sodomized with a sharp object. Something the others did not have.”

            Bruce brows knitted, “Post mortem. He did it post mortem. He stayed with the body longer.”

            “More signs of escalation.”

            “He left semen too. Not that it helps any because we don’t have his DNA in CODIS, but still—”

            “We can confirm the murders are linked once DNA is matched. And it looks a little more frantic. Sloppy.”

            “Yes,” Bruce’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, “He’s going to make a mistake as he gets more excited with his kills. He’ll change how he does it, go after riskier victims. Kill in a more public location. Dump the bodies somewhere he has a chance of getting caught.”

            “More people will die.”

            The thought sickened Clark. To know that the more bodies they had, the more evidence they had to stack up against the JD Killer. But it was true. Bruce was right on the money with the kills becoming more frenzied as they grew closer together. Mistakes would be made. It was how some of the most prolific killers in history had been caught. Because eventually, they made a mistake.

            “Everything else is the same.”

            Bruce nodded, “I’ve finished my profile and compiled my list of team members. I’ve only got two in mind, but I think you’ll approve of them. I can send them over later tonight.”

            “It can wait till Monday Bruce.”

            “If we’re going to be working together, Kent, you’re going to have to start realizing that nothing gets in the way of me doing my job. Nothing.”

            Clark cocked his head, “Not even family?”

            “Especially then. What I do, I do for them. They understand that.”

            It was difficult to say why exactly Bruce’s presence lingered in his apartment after the man left. Why Clark could still smell his cologne in the air or feel his warmth as he poured himself another cup of coffee and then sat down in front of his laptop. But Clark did his best to put it out of his mind while he looked back over the ME report.

            _Post-mortem sodomizing with a sharp object._

_Defensive wounds on arms and legs._

_Jaw broken for removal of teeth._

The JD Killer was unlike any criminal Clark had come across before. He was vulgar. Violent. Motivated by rules of his own making and slave to his rituals.

            It made Clark’s head ache to stare too long at the photos. But he kept at it until his eyes blurred and like promised, Bruce’s profile and team member list showed up in his inbox after a few hours. When Clark worked late into the night on matching missing person’s reports with their latest victims’ profile, he silently promised the hollow faces that he’d help them. That it would be over soon.

            He hoped he was right.   


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one day? Why the hell not? :D Enjoy!

            Clark didn’t come into contact with Bruce again until mid-week and even then, it was a grudging phone call to set up a meet and greet for their team members. Bruce’s voice was clipped on the phone, borderline bitchy, and Clark could only shake his head in amusement.

            He supposed it was strange to find another man’s sheer animosity towards him attractive or funny. But Clark wasn’t going to psychoanalyze something like that. Not when it was clear Bruce wasn’t interested in having anything develop between the two of them.

            Sure, there were sparks. A lot of them.

            Clark had felt them in the GCPD courtyard. And he was fairly certain he’d seen the flicker of fear in Bruce’s gaze as if he’d felt them too. But Bruce had given every indication that he wasn’t interested in pursuing anything personally. Which made perfect sense as they were buried up to their eyeballs in paperwork, backlogged evidence, and yellow-tape for their investigation.

            They’d identified their latest victim.

            Henry H. Hughes. Twenty-eight. Single. Had been living in Metropolis for the better part of a year and had just recently bought an apartment on his own. He worked in a marketing firm on L street and was one of the bright and upcoming stars of the firm.

            Now he was a body in the morgue. Evidence. It would take a few more weeks to release the body to the family for burial.

            Clark had been the one to tell the family. He’d called them in, shown them a couple of tattoos on the corpse, and asked for something from home to confirm with DNA the man’s identity. But he knew it was Henry H. Hughes.

            Clark would never forget his mother’s face as she’d sat at his desk with that photograph of her son’s back. Where lifeless gray skin was still marked with a pair of onyx wings. Clark didn’t know what the wings had meant to Henry—didn’t need to know. But he’d been in a funk ever since. Feeling like he was suffocating in the city and needed a breath of fresh air. Maybe he was. Maybe all the crime and the case notes, and the dust from the evidence locker was getting to him.

            Or he was possibly getting a cold.

            Maybe both.

            By the time he meandered into the conference room, dragging ass and sipping on cold coffee, both detective Gibbons and detective Mince were already present and accounted for. He shared small-talk, about their families, the other cases they were pulled from for this, and silently willed the clock to go faster.

            Bruce showed up fifteen minutes later with his own pair of detectives and his grimace firmly in place. Clark wondered if the man even knew he did it, or if he had to school his face into that scowl every time he walked into a room where Clark was present.

            “Good afternoon, my name is detective Clark Kent. This is detective Tracy Gibbons from homicide and detective Brad Mince from sex crimes. Welcome to Metropolis PD.”

            Bruce smiled tightly back and took a seat beside his detectives. “I’m detective Wayne and this is detective Bryan and detective McQuaid, both are from homicide.”

            “Pleasure to meet you,” Clark offered in return and the meeting slowly ground forward.

            A couple hours in, jackets had been discarded, coffee had been refreshed and a whiteboard was unearthed where Bruce was scribbling notes and drawing lines and garnering everyone’s attention raptly as he discussed his profile. It was fascinating to watch how the man’s mind worked. Enthralling really. And Clark could see he wasn’t the only member of their team who thought so.

            They ended for the day at four with a new meeting set a week out, unless another body was found. Emails were exchanged, and information ferried between servers. Tentative bonds between their members were forged. All in all, a successful team integration.

            Clark still felt weary. He still felt like someone was sitting on his chest and he needed to breathe but he was pleased with how the meeting had gone.

            And he was very ready to go home.

            Bruce apparently had other plans because he stopped Clark at his desk while he was stuffing files into his briefcase.

            “You alright Kent?”

            Clark snorted, “Just fine, Bruce. Not to worry. You can go home.”

            “You seemed a little—off in there. Are you—”

            “I’m fine Bruce,” Clark stopped him, slung the briefcase over his shoulder then headed for the elevators. Bruce followed, a silent crabby presence at his back that Clark really didn’t have the energy to deal with. On a good day, Bruce could be a challenge to handle. Diplomatically.

            On this day, Clark might snap. And there was no telling what the consequences of that might be.

            “I feel like—” Bruce cleared his throat, sounding surprisingly soft-spoken in the confines of the elevator, “I should apologize.”

            Clark lifted a brow, “For what?”

            “I’m not friendly. With anyone. I’m aware of that, but perhaps I’ve been a bit too much of an ass and—”

            Clark waved a hand, “I like you, Bruce. And I don’t mind when you’re a dick. It’s not you, it’s something else. Don’t worry about it.”

            Bruce’s frown deepened, “Then what is it? You look—wounded.”

            “I'm tired, Bruce. It happens to the best of us. I’m not as gung-ho as you are. I actually get worn out when I stare at mangled bodies all day.”

            “That’s not fair.”

            “No?” Clark stepped out of the elevator and headed for the parking garage. He just wanted to get home. And away from handsome detectives who wore black-t-shirts like they were the next best thing. The sound of Bruce’s badge swinging on his neck was a distracting click in his ears as Clark spotted his cruiser.

            It shouldn’t have surprised him that Bruce followed him all the way up to his door and stood there awkwardly scowling for a moment, but it did. And it made Clark’s thin grip on his control falter. Made him take a step closer that he shouldn’t have to get Bruce to look up, so he could see the color of his eyes.

            “Go home, Bruce. I’ll call you later—about the case.”

            “Right,” Bruce nodded his head, but didn’t move, didn’t look like he was even breathing.

            There was a stretching sensation in Clark’s middle. Like a rubber band pulling taut, stretching to it’s max and Clark was a slave to the sensation. He couldn’t tear his gaze off Bruce’s mouth all the sudden, or the flutter of Bruce’s pulse which was really faster than it should have been considering they were both standing still.

            And Bruce could see it—he knew.

            “Clark,” Bruce said warningly but didn’t back up. His body had locked up and he was frozen, hands in fists at his sides, jaw flexing madly. “It isn’t a good idea.”

            “Why not?” Clark breathed, stepping closer without permission, invading Bruce’s space to run the blade of his nose along Bruce’s cheekbone. God, it felt good. It felt so damn good. And it was like a balm to the ache he’d been experiencing all week. He just couldn’t make himself stop and Bruce wasn’t stopping him either.

            “Why not?” Clark repeated, reaching with a hand to frame Bruce’s jaw and watched as Bruce blinked and his breath stuttered.

            Bruce didn’t get a chance to answer. Because Clark took advantage of the stunned look on his face and pressed their mouths together.

            And surprise, surprise, Bruce kissed him back.

            Not soft, not even a little, but hard and furious. Angry. Like how Clark imagined the detective would kiss him. Like how he wanted it.

            Their teeth clicked together when Bruce grabbed onto him and Clark’s ass hit the door of his car hard enough to rock the cruiser, but they kept kissing. Groping blindly beneath the yellow tint of the garage lighting, in full view of anyone who might happen by.

            What they were doing—was dangerous. Against policy. Would likely get them a reprimand in their files if they got caught but Clark couldn’t stop. His hands were in Bruce’s hair tugging and Bruce was making these wonderful little noises in the back of his throat like he was going mad from it. So, Clark kept at it. He let one hand roam till it was hooked in Bruce’s belt, tugging those narrow hips flush to his own, and then Bruce sucked in a breath, abruptly breaking contact, looking drugged out of his mind.

            “We—” Bruce’s voice was shaky, nothing like the brisk way he usually spoke. Not a trace of calm in it. “We shouldn’t have—we can’t do that.”

            “We did,” Clark said softly, adjusting his plaid which had been partly pulled open. His lips were still buzzing, and he could taste Bruce on his tongue. Mint gum over coffee. “And we could, Bruce. We really could again.”

            “I—no,” Bruce shook his head, suddenly trying to fix his hair, back up more steps, get control again. “We can’t.”

            Clark felt the cold weight from before the kiss return and he nodded slowly, turning back to his cruiser. He couldn’t have picked a better way to end his day on a shitty note.

            “Goodnight Bruce.”

            Bruce hesitated, Clark could feel it. But Clark wasn’t about to make this more painful than it already was. So, he got into his car, flipped on the radio and wouldn’t let his gaze linger when Bruce finally started for his own car.

            But Clark didn’t sleep well and the next morning, his first thought was of the kiss and how perfect Bruce’s mouth had fit to his. It sent him to work in a terrible mood.

 

***

 

           

            Bruce was woken at four in the morning to the hollow buzzing of his phone on his nightstand. He struggled through gritty eyes to see the screen and then fell back into the pillows.

            _Body found in Buford Park along the Gotham River. Report ASAP._

            “Jesus,” Bruce hissed, scrubbing both hands down his face. A moment later, he got a text from Kent and felt his stomach jump before he realized it was just the man confirming he’d be on the scene as soon as he could. Within the hour.

            Bruce would have a good thirty minutes lead looking over the crime scene alone. The prospect had him getting out of bed faster, stretching as his back popped and his knees groaned a little from lying still all night.

            He had sheet marks on his face and he was forced to cover his bed head with a baseball cap but it wouldn’t have been the first time Bruce showed up at a murder looking like death warmed over himself. Calls in the middle of the night tended to do that. Bruce crept down the hall from his room, avoiding any squeaky places in the flooring as he padded towards Damian’s room. It was something he did every morning he had to leave before saying goodbye. He bent low, kissed Damian’s mop of dark hair, then held his breath so he could listen a beat to the soft whoof of air coming out of the five-year-old’s lungs. It was a reassuring sound. Grounding in the stale morning air.

            Bruce shot a text to Alfred on his way out the door, tugging a hoody on over his wrinkled gray t-shirt. He’d have to come back home later, wash up and recollect himself. But for the next few hours, what he was wearing would suffice. He could do the work in a paper bag if need be.

            It was still dark out when Wayne got to Buford Park and the air was like thick cream around the scene. Smog was hanging low, a layer of filth added to the atmosphere and Wayne felt like he had to wade through it to get to the epicenter of movement. CSI were already on scene and Wayne could see Gotham’s ME had also arrived. The park was firmly on Gotham’s side of the river, so the body would go to their morgue. But it was still riverside. The tang of brine and seaweed was still strong enough to make Wayne’s empty stomach pitch as he pushed past the yellow plastic and squished over soggy wood chips.

            “Fucking hell,” Bruce whispered, dipping into a squat beside the faceless man with disgust. “This is even fresher than the other one.”

            “Yeah,” Chief Borden had apparently been roused by the flashy dumping of the body too because he moved to stand beside Wayne with a grimace. “Witnesses saw an unmarked van dump the body. No license plate. No make or model.”

            Wayne’s head whipped to the chief, “They saw him dump the body?”

            “Looks that way.”

            “He’s never taken the bodies somewhere else for the kill before,” Wayne frowned, flicking a glance back down to the naked shoulders of the victim, “Younger again. White. Well-groomed. Sexual assault and obvious sodomy.”

            “Yes,” the CSI to his right nodded, looking a bit green at the gills. Wayne felt for the girl. “He’s been sodomized. And there appears to be fluid.”

            “Do a rape kit.”

            It wouldn’t help them. Not really. But Wayne was determined that eventually all the DNA evidence their killer was so blatantly leaving behind would mean something. It fucking had to.

            “I’ve got hair.”

            “What?”

            “Hair, not from the victim.”

            Wayne felt a clutch in his chest, “From the perp?”

            “Maybe. It’s obviously unnaturally colored. It’s green.”

            “Green.”

            “Yeah,” she swallowed thickly, using tweezers to put the hair carefully into an evidence bag, “I’ll be able to tell you a hell of a lot more after I analyze it.”

            A piece of hair could tell a great many things. It could confirm details about their killer. If the hair was dyed and possibly if he was a frequent drug user. If he took care of himself at all. 

            Mistakes. Already there were more mistakes happening.

            But there was also a decided uptick in the frequency of kills. Their last body had been discovered only two weeks ago. He’d chopped his usual wait time in half. And it made Wayne uneasy.

            “Page me the minute you’ve got something. Anything.”

            “Will do, detective.”

            Wayne stayed long enough to fill a few pages of his own notes, to walk the scene and picture how the van might have pulled up. He looked for car tracks, burned rubber, and found none. He hadn’t driven on the soil, else they might have been able to get tire impressions. Their witness had only given them a white van. And that was it.

            But she might know more and be afraid to tell. This neighborhood wasn’t the best and druggies were regularly busted only a block away. The JD Killer might be escalating with which victims he chose, but he was still more comfortable dumping in an area he had a sure getaway, despite being pretty fucking ballsy by doing it in a park.

            Wayne was heading back from his circuit, about to move for the riverbank when he caught sight of Kent ambling towards him. Long legs eating up the distance in steady strides. It immediately put him on edge and made his insides twist painfully.

            And it was his own fucking fault.

            He’d known the moment Kent had looked at him like that, in the garage, that he wanted to kiss him. That they were going to if Wayne didn’t change their trajectory. But he just let it happen. Worse, he’d full participated had practically been moaning into Kent’s mouth while he shoved him down on the hood of his cruiser.

            His behavior that afternoon had been more than a little humiliating.

            And he’d done his damnedest to forget it even happened. But it was an immense struggle.

            “At least it’s not raining this time.”

            “Yeah,” Bruce looked out at the river and the sliver of sunlight struggling to make its way past the fog. He could see the glow of Metropolis’ city lights on the clouds.

            “I just spoke with CSI. They said they found a hair.”

            “Yeah.”

            Kent blew out a breath, “And we’ve got a witness for the body dump. He’s escalating faster than I expected. It’s only been two weeks since the last body.”

            Wayne sighed, “Yes, he’s moving faster. But he’s making more mistakes. As shitty as it is to be happy about more bodies, it means we’re getting closer to catching him.”

            “Have you canvassed the riverbank yet?”

            “No. I was headed there next.”

            “I’ll tag along,” Kent said softly, falling into step beside Wayne as they took the stairs down the grassy slope that dipped into the channel for the river. At the bottom of the stairs, the ground turned to pebbles and noisily protested their walking on it.

            They surveyed silently, walking a good quarter of a mile in both directions until Kent stopped him.

            “What?”

            “There,” Kent jerked his chin, pointing at a patch of darkened pebbles, “he did it there.”

            Kent was right. The blood on the pebbles hadn’t dried yet. It smelled coppery above the scent of the river and filled Wayne’s nose vengefully. There was vomit beside the blood, likely from the victim during the assault and Wayne had to look away to keep his own stomach in check.

            “He’s a monster,” Kent’s voice sounded strained, equally disturbed by the aftermath, though they’d seen this before. Had countless photos of evidence on their desks with other mirrored scenes. But this one was more violent than the others.

            “Yes.”

            “Do you—” Kent swallowed like he was struggling, “Do you want some coffee? We could—”

            Wayne surprised himself by interrupting, “Yes. Yes, I’d like some coffee.”

            They met at a café that Wayne was familiar with but had never tried. They were only a few blocks away from where he’d picked up Jason that first time. The sun had managed to get up enough to light the café in soft oranges and everything looked a little hazy. Wayne could make out the dust motes as they lazily floated in the air. It smelled like bacon and coffee. Like pancakes.

            He wasn’t hungry.

            They drank their coffee. Said nothing. Just shared the same breathing space for long enough Wayne almost forgot he wasn’t alone. Until Kent cleared his throat and smiled weakly at him.

            “I’m sorry about the garage.”

            “Don’t be,” Wayne shook his head, “I wanted—it was obvious I wanted it too. We just can’t do that again.”

            Kent was studying him, eyes flickering over his face in quick little jerks, making Wayne suddenly feel absurdly uncomfortable. It was possible he was blushing.

            “Because we could get reprimanded.”

            Wayne lifted a brow, “Yeah, we could get fucking reprimanded and in my case, possibly fired. I don’t know how they do things in Metropolis but fraternizing like that could cost me my job.”

            “And you love your job.”

            Wayne looked down, focused on a coffee ring on the table.

            “Bruce, I don’t think I can forget it.”

            “I’m not asking you too.”

            “But you said—”

            “We’ve got a job to do Kent. When we close the case, when we catch that fucking monster and make our cities safe again, then that’s different.”

            “Why?”

            Wayne looked up at Kent and scowled, “Because then we won’t be on the same task force.”

            Kent started to laugh, and Wayne didn’t think anything about their conversation was amusing in the least. He’d spent countless hours tortured by that fucking kiss and here the object of his torture was _laughing_ at him.

            “Alright, let me get this straight, for posterity sake,” Kent managed after a moment, calming himself enough not be laughing like a fucking asshole at Wayne’s expense, “You think we can manage to work together for who knows how long, until we solve the case, and _then_ reengage in whatever we had going on in the parking garage. Without any slipups in between.”

            “It’s—a possibility. Yes.”

            “And what if I think you’re crazy for thinking that? What if I can’t keep my hands to myself during one of these meetings or house calls we have? What then?”

            “We—” Bruce’s face was hot, his hoody felt like a noose on his throat. God, it had been quite a long time since he’d felt something this strong for another human being. Since he’d wanted someone like this. “We would move on. We have to. It’s the—job.”

            “Right,” Kent mused, one hand flattening on the table, then scooting close enough Wayne could feel its warmth brushing his own. “The job. And nothing comes before that for you. Ever.”

            Wayne’s throat had closed. He couldn’t speak. He could only look up at Kent and stare, sending the message loud and clear that he wasn’t willing to risk this. That he couldn’t step over this line.

            “I’ve got to get back to Metropolis,” Kent’s voice was still too quiet, still too intimate and it made Wayne’s stomach curl, “I’ll call you Bruce. I’m sure we’ll both be busy the next couple of days with all the reports. But we’ll obviously need to go over the case. To discuss the ME report. Forensics. Blood spatter. And I’m sure you’ll need to add a few things to your profile, now that we’ve got a new body.”

            Wayne swallowed, unlocked his jaw. “Yes.”

            “Alright then. You have my number.”

            Kent turned and left. He didn’t look back. He didn’t stop.

            “And you’ve clearly got mine,” Wayne whispered the words, to an empty booth, long after Kent had finally left. He stayed until he finished his coffee, then forced himself to get up and leave too.

            He needed a shower. A very cold shower.

            And then he needed a goddamn break in this case.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've read any of my work before now, you know I often miss little mistakes here and there. Forgive my stupid fingers and I hope you enjoy this chapter. :)

            Damian was sick.

            Running a fever, stuffed up sinuses with big watery green eyes, and a need for Bruce to remain at his side without pause.

            Bruce called in sick, told his chief he couldn’t come in but would work from home when and if his time allowed him. He called Damian’s school and made the proper excuses and then tucked back into bed with a sweaty clingy orangutan.

            Damian slept plastered to his side for the first couple of hours. He didn’t allow Bruce to roll or even get out of bed to pee without breaking into hysterics. So, Bruce remained until he couldn’t, then he got them both up and rummaged in his bathroom cabinet for some children’s Tylenol to poke down his son’s throat.

            “Let’s go downstairs and get you something to eat, chum.”

            Damian wrapped himself around Bruce, piggyback style, and damn near choked the air off, but let go immediately when he saw Alfred at the stove.

            Then Bruce was obsolete. Because Alfred, despite his stuffy British ways, was very good at pampering children when sick. He made French toast for breakfast, garnished with strawberries and jam and gave Bruce a moment to disappear to shower off the sweat from sleeping beside Damian all night.

            Bruce was halfway dressed in a pair of sweats when he got a text from Kent.

            _ME report just filed. Meet up?_

Bruce stared at the screen until his eyes blurred, then finally forced himself to answer truthfully. _Sick Kid. Can’t. Tomorrow maybe._

_Sick kid? Poor guy. I’ll come to you._

Bruce froze, then abruptly tried to text back before Kent could solidify any plans and failed as a second message appeared on his phone at lightning speed.

            _Already on my way. Your address is in your personnel file. ;)_

            “Mother fucker,” he hissed, tugging off his sweats to go find something else to wear because there was no way in hell he was going to be caught in his sweats.

            There was something like panic rushing up Bruce’s throat when he clamored down the stairs forty minutes later to answer the front door. Alfred was still busy with Damian in the kitchen and from the sound of it, they’d be in there for a while. The Tylenol was working its magic. But it wouldn’t last. Damian would get tired again, grumpy, and seek Bruce out like the little leech he became when sick.

            And his guest was bound to see it. Was bound to see how easily Bruce melted in front of his children. That they made him weak.

            Bruce wasn’t sure what it would do to their working relationship, let alone, the other one they were dancing around. Because it _would_ change things.

            Having Clark— no, Kent—step into his home, peering up at the chandelier in the entryway made Bruce feel absurdly nervous. Worse, he never, _never_ , brought work home with him like this. Over the last fifteen years, no one outside of his social circles had been in his home or met his children. His work life was completely separate from his home life.

            Until now.

            Now he couldn’t switch his brain into Wayne mode. He was stuck—glitching madly between Bruce and Wayne and something in between. Staring at Clark—at Kent—like a fool. Especially because all he could think about was that kiss and the way Clark’s mouth had felt on his own. How Clark’s hands felt in his hair.

            “Nice place.”

            “Thanks, let’s do this in my office.”

            “Sure,” Kent agreed easily, eyes still swiveling as he took in the room, like a child with a candy bar. 

            Bruce’s office was a quiet space he kept locked and out of reach from the boys. Not even Alfred was allowed inside, because of the sensitive material he left out when working a case. He had a large whiteboard setup beside the heavy mahogany desk that was rigidly organized with stacks of files. Photographs of the victims were tagged to the whiteboard with magnets and their stats were written in cramped handwriting beneath them. Lines were drawn where any connections had been made.

            “Wow.”

            Bruce shifted on his feet, “It’s—I like to keep it like work. Like the office.”

            “It’s almost a replica.”

            “Yes. Let’s talk about the ME report. I can pull it up on the computer if you give me a moment.”

            “Sure. You mind if I look around?”

            Bruce hesitated at his desk, fingers brushing along his laptop. There wasn’t much to get into which was private in this office. And that was because Bruce kept everything so separate. But standing without the familiar weight of his police badge on his neck, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, he felt exposed. He felt like—Bruce. Not Wayne. Wayne who was confident and brash. Rude. Wayne, who could easily spurn any of Kent’s attention. And had.

            “Of course.”

            Kent lifted a brow at that but then moved to explore the space. There were bookshelves stuffed to the max with textbooks from classes, thesis papers, books on profiling, serial killers, and evidence gathering. Bruce had amassed a small fortune in information over the last decade and a half and he was still collecting.

            Still buying books and had started simply stacking them up on the floor because there wasn’t any more room.

            “You’ve read all of these?”

            “Yes,” Bruce didn’t look up from his laptop. He was too busy logging onto the PD server.

            “That’s incredible.”

            “It’s not really. I like to read. I have insomnia.”

            Kent was back at the desk, peering down at him with wide blue eyes and a half smile. “Insomnia.”

            “Yes,” Bruce licked his lips, “I assume you’ve heard of it, Kent.”

            Kent snorted, “There you are, detective. That’s more like you.”

            Bruce had to work to keep his breathing even. If he let himself, he could feel Kent’s hands on him. He could taste Kent’s cinnamon breath Tic-Tacs. “I’ve got the files open. Are you ready?”

            “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

            They poured over the ME report and got midway into Bruce’s theory that the killer could be working for a local taxi cab company for better access to the victims—then Alfred knocked on the door.

            “Yes?” Bruce stood and moved to answer it, leaving Kent in front of the whiteboard.

            “I’m afraid Master Damian is calling for you now. He’s getting quite put out that you’ve run off.”

            Bruce chuckled, “I’ll be right out.”

            When Bruce turned back around to address Kent, the man was already far too close and looking incredibly confused. “Was that a—butler?”

            “That was Alfred. And yes, he’s our butler. But he’s also family.”

            “You have a butler.”

            “Yes,” Bruce managed past clenched teeth, “you already said that. I need you to go. My son needs me.”

            “Oh, come on,” Kent was grinning now, smile wide and white, “Don’t get all salty with me. It’s shocking to hear about how the rich live compared to us plebeians. You must know that.”

            “I don’t like it—I don’t like my work life and home life colliding like this.”

            Kent’s brows went up, “You mean I can’t even say hi?”

            “I would prefer that you didn’t.”

            “Why? I’m not gonna infect him with my averageness.”

            “Clark—” Bruce’s face emptied of all the blood and he quickly tried to correct himself, “Kent. I—just stop. You’re making me uncomfortable and I don’t particularly like the sensation. So please just—just stop.”

            “Okay,” Clark’s voice had gone soft, gentle, “Okay, I’ll stop. Sorry.”

            It was intensely aggravating to realize that he was just as attracted to this version of Clark as he was to the work version. That the two were both compelling. They had the same smile and softness while still being a fucking tease.

            It was at the moment where Bruce was considering shoving Clark out the door physically when Damian came barreling into his office. There was a mad scurry to cover up crime scene photos, to get the five-year-old back out of the room and then Bruce was scooping his son up and escaping, leaving Kent to either follow or leave.

            Of course, Kent followed. Of course, he stayed close and waited till Bruce had Damian completely wrapped around him, face buried in his neck. They ended up at the bottom of the stairs, a safe distance from the office, but not nearly close enough to the doors for Clark to leave.

            “Hey little man,” Kent tried out and Damian scowled at him in response, only burrowing deeper into Bruce’s neck. Damian’s skin felt feverish. He would need another dose of medicine.

            “He’s not much of a talker.”

            “That’s alright. I wasn’t either as a kid.”

            Bruce tried to imagine Kent as small as Damian, soft around the face, but couldn’t. Clark was too tall. Too larger than life and bright to imagine him ever being innocent and doe-eyed.  

            “Kent—thanks for coming over. We got some valuable work done.”

            “Yeah,” Clark’s smile made the corners of his eyes crinkle, “It’s nice to put a face to the name. Damian, right?”

            “Yes,” Bruce shifted Damian’s weight in his arms, “He’s going to need a nap.”

            “I can wait.”

            Bruce blinked at Clark, realized he wasn’t ready for Clark to leave after all, then nodded. “Okay, just give me a few minutes.”

            “Should I wait right here?”

            “Oh,” Bruce rubbed Damian’s back as he started to squirm and whine, “No. Head to the kitchen. It’s down the hall three doors down. Alfred might be in there.”

            “Sure.”

            Bruce didn’t know what the hell he was doing, but it felt right when he found Clark in his kitchen a half hour later, exactly where he instructed. Clark was leaning against the counter, drinking something hot by the steam rising off the top.

            “Alfred made tea.”

            “English breakfast. Alfred’s favorite. You must have already charmed my butler.”

            Clark smirked over his mug, “I might have laid on my Midwestern charisma a bit thick. He seemed to like it.”

            Of course, Alfred liked it. Alfred had been bemoaning Bruce’s status as a single man for ages. If he thought there was any chance, even a glimmer of Bruce settling down with someone, he’d leap at it.

            “Alfred is a romantic.”

            “He cares about you a great deal.”

            Bruce shrugged, moving to pour his own cup of tea and then join Clark. In the late afternoon slant of sunlight, Clark’s presence in the manor felt very nearly—natural. Like he was meant to be sharing tea with Bruce on lazy afternoons. Like it would be easy, to be like this.

            “Damian is a cute kid.”

            “Thanks.”

            “And your oldest, is how old?”

            “Dick is twenty-three. Jason is eighteen, almost nineteen and Timothy is seventeen, almost eighteen.”

            Clark smiled, “I’m sure you have an interesting story for how you met each of them.”

            “I do. It was meant to be. All of them.”

            “You believe in fate then?”

            Bruce shook his head, “Yes and no. I’ve seen too much evil to think none of it has a purpose.”

            “I know I shouldn’t have, but I did some reading on you.”

            “Did you now?” Bruce busied himself by drinking more tea, looking anywhere else but Clark’s searching gaze.

            “Your parents were murdered when you were just a boy. I understand now why you became a cop. Why the job always comes first for you.”

            Bruce’s throat felt abruptly tight and if he didn’t have the mug in his hands, he might have given himself away with the sudden tremble that rushed over his frame. “Yes.”

            “I’m sorry, Bruce.”

            “It was a long time ago.”

            “That promise you made—”

            “Kent,” Bruce almost dropped the mug, “Kent, stop.”

            “Sorry.”

            “It’s fine,” Bruce forced a smile on his mouth, forced his stomach to uncurl, “I—I don’t talk about them. It’s too—it’s painful.”

            “I can imagine. I won’t bring it up again,” Clark shifted, glanced at his wrist, then frowned, “I’ve got a meeting downtown in less than an hour. I’m going to have to leave,” he looked up at Bruce and the shadow in his eyes was enough to make Bruce ache. To make him take an involuntary step forward before remembering that he needed to not do this. He needed to not want Clark like that.

            Not yet.

            _Distance. Compartmentalize._

            “Oh. Right.”

            “I wish I could stay,” Clark’s voice had dropped into a soft promise.

            Bruce blinked, swallowed convulsively. “Yeah.”

            “I’ll show myself out.”

            Bruce hesitated, “You sure?”

            “You aren’t the only detective, Bruce. I remember how I got in, I can get myself out.”

            “Of course,” he filled in the space awkwardly, then forced a smile to his tight mouth, “Keep in touch.”

            “Oh, I will.”

            There was something about the way Kent said it that was more of a threat than a promise. Bruce wished he wasn’t so damn happy about it.

           

***

 

            “Toxicology came back negative for any alcohol or drugs. The victim was clean. However, the hair that we found was not. Perp uses crack on the regular and has terribly split ends. He also dyes his hair with box hair color. Probably does it himself.”

            Detective Mince was frowning down at the reports, tapping his pen on the table, “ME said the victim was sodomized with a sharp object. Just like the other younger male. Any time there is penetration, it denotes a sense of power and aggression. It’s not just sexual, it’s sadistic. He gets off probably more on that than he does with the actual killing itself.”

            “Henry Hughes was gay.”

            “Our latest victim, now identified as Benjamin Cove, was straight. He was engaged. There is no connection between the victims’ sexual orientation. It doesn’t appear to matter. Our guy is picking victims that are male and white, but that’s about all he seems picky with. He’s using the opportunity as his main criteria for picking a candidate,” Bruce said quietly, tipped back in his chair with his coffee resting on his stomach. Clark could see it was still full. Still steaming hot and probably tasted like battery acid.

            “What about the taxi driver theory? How is that flowing?”

            Detective McQuaid spoke up. “We’ve canvassed the areas near our hunting grounds, specifically looking for cabbies with green hair. Nada. Nobody matches our perp’s possible description.”

            “He could have already dyed his hair a new color.”

            Bruce sat up straighter, “He probably can’t keep a job for long. Not with his behavior becoming more and more erratic. He likely has a history of molesting children, maybe even as a child himself. Voyeurism charges. He would undoubtedly have a juvenile record.”

            “Those cases are sealed.”

            “What if we did a blind DNA sweep of the local taxi companies?”

            Clark scowled, “Nobody is going to put out for a DNA swab without proper cause.”

            “It’s worth a shot. People are scared of this guy. He’s killed, fourteen people. And both cities want him caught. I wouldn’t underestimate that,” Detective Gibbons looked pointedly at Bruce, “What do you think Wayne?”

            “I think nothing will hurt our chances. He’s not going to stop killing even if we get close. He’s not spook-able. If he follows the new time table, we have less than eight days before he dumps another body.”

            “Alright,” Clark swallowed thickly, “I’ll talk to the judge, make sure we’re covered legally and then we head out. Canvass and hopefully swab as many cabbies as are willing.”

            “And if they’re not?”

            “Write them down. We’ll add them to our potential suspect list.”

            McQuaid laughed, but it was far from humorous, “That list is going to get real long, real quick.”

            “We don’t have a choice. We follow every lead. This is a possible lead.”

 

           

            Clark’s feet hurt. His back hurt. His eyes hurt.

            Everything hurt.

            They’d swabbed over six-hundred mouths. Had flooded both Gotham and Metropolis’ crime labs with DNA comparison screens and were probably going to come up with a dead end on them all.

            The killer wouldn’t have submitted to a DNA test. Out of eight hundred cabbies, in ten different cab companies, one hundred and eighty-eight had refused the swab. One of them could be the killer. But Clark didn’t think so.

            Gut told him that the cabby angle was wrong.

            But gut wasn’t a scientific thing. No, science was that he needed a solid night’s sleep and a hefty dinner. Science was, that if he didn’t feed his cat her supper, she was going to keep meowing at that obnoxious level till his ears bled.

            “Abigail,” Clark scratched under her chin, then moved for the bag of kibble he kept on top of the fridge where she had a hard time reaching. She was overweight enough without her getting into the food while he was at work. “You’re such a prima donna.”

            “You always talk to your cat?”

            Clark whirled in the kitchen, dropping the dish of cat food and spilling kibble all over the linoleum. “Jesus Christ, Bruce!”

            “I knocked. The door was open. You should use your deadbolt and your chain.”

            Clark had to sit for a solid minute at the counter with Abigail happily munching away at his feet from the mess he made to calm his thundering heart. Bruce, who’d entered his apartment, _again_ , like he owned the place merely watched with amusement.

            “What are you doing here? I have a phone. You could have called.”

            “I thought I’d drop by before heading back to Gotham.”

            “For what?”

            Bruce shrugged, “You don’t seem sold about the taxi cab angle.”

            “I—” Clark shifted on the counter, struggling to orient his brain back to work and off the way Bruce was standing at the bar. With his hands folded and his shoulders lax. His eyes were soft tonight. Welcoming. “You’re right. I don’t agree.”

            “Why?”

            “A cabby with green hair would have gotten noticed by now.”

            “He could have dyed his hair.”

            “And that would have gotten noticed as well. We made it clear we were looking for someone who had green hair. There are enough suspicion and fear around the JD Killer that it should have elicited a few tips if our guy was hiding as a cabby.”

            “Then what? What does he do for a living? How is he coming into contact with the victims?”

            “I think—well, it’s just a hunch—but I think he might be doing it as Bundy did.”

            “Ted Bundy?”

            “Yeah. He would lure his victims in by saying he needed help loading his groceries or something because his arm was broken. He even wore a sling to make it look more real. And it made it easy to underestimate him. Even easier since our guy is going after males. And men typically don’t think of themselves as potential victims, until it’s too late.”

            Bruce looked like he was considering the theory strongly. “It would make sense.”

            “It would.”

            “What do you wager he’s making money doing?”

            “Something with little social impact. Maybe something from home. On his computer. It would give him the freedom to be out late and feed the habit without interfering in his ability to pay bills.”

            Bruce nodded, “Another strong possibility. Why didn’t you share these ideas at our meeting?”

            “Because my guesses are purely off of gut and yours are off of actual science.”

            “Kent—” Bruce shifted, looked down at the counter where his hands were resting, “You’re a good detective. You wouldn’t have been placed on this team as co-leader if you weren’t. You close cases. You solve crime. Just because you don’t do it the same fucking way I do, doesn’t mean it isn’t just as valid. We can’t quantify gut instinct but it’s as real as my being here in your house when I sure as hell shouldn’t be.”

            The little truth bomb at the end was exactly what Clark had _not_ been expecting from Bruce.

            Clark blinked, stepped around Abigail, who’d almost finished her supper, then reached forward to cover one of Bruce’s hands with his own. His skin was warm, his knuckles a little rough. Scarred up from work or punching a bag without mitts. Clark didn’t care, he liked the feel of it on his palm.

            “Then why are you here?”

            Bruce kept looking at the counter, kept staring at their hands, “Because I wanted to be. Because I couldn’t stay away. Because—maybe you were right at the café.”

            “Right about what?”

            “Are you going to make me spell it out?”

            Clark laughed softly, “Bruce—tell me what you want.”

            Bruce rolled a shoulder, looked up hesitantly, “Is it too fucking cliché to say I want you?”

            “No,” Clark’s pulse was a fast staccato in his throat, blurring his vision under the steady dumping of adrenaline. He moved around the bar then leaned into Bruce’s space for a beat, a pause that let Bruce back up if he really didn’t want it, then kissed him.

            It was a different kiss than before. Bruce’s mouth didn’t attack his. It opened up like a flower to the sun.

            And that was far deadlier to Clark.

            Clark fisted a hand in Bruce’s slippery jacket, jerking him closer, pressing their fronts flush and Bruce gave a strangled groan that immediately forced blood south. They lost themselves for long minutes, kissing till Bruce pressed a hand hard to his chest to stop him, breaking for air. But instead of pulling away like Clark expected, instead of running, like Clark would have assumed, Bruce stayed close and let his head rest on Clark’s shoulder.

            His breathing was fast and warm on Clark’s neck. Dizzying.

            “If you don’t want this Bruce, you should go. I’ve only got so much self-control.”

            Bruce tensed, “I don’t—I don’t know why I’m here. Why I can’t stay away from you.”

            Clark chuckled, shaking his head, “Bruce, if that’s how you do dirty talk, you have got to work on it.”

            “Fuck you,” Bruce growled, but it was said with no bite. It was drunk off of the kiss, off of the nearness that hadn’t ended.

            “Will you stay?”

            “The boys—I always come home. I never—” _never do this_. It made Clark’s chest ache a little to know that Bruce was risking so much. That he was stepping so far outside of his comfort zone by being here. By even considering staying. It meant that this was going to be far more than some quick physical release.

            It was going to mean something. Something big.  

            “Would Alfred watch them?”

            “He—” Bruce swallowed, his cheeks going endearingly pink, “He would.”

            “Then call him,” Clark dipped, caught Bruce’s mouth and nibbled, bit down on that lower lip he wanted to worry till it was red and puffy, “Please.”

            Bruce staggered a bit when Clark stepped back and damn if that wasn’t hot. Clark went back to the kitchen, forced himself to slow down, to make his breathing nice and even while he tried to fix something for dinner. But he could hear the rumble of Bruce’s voice on the phone, working things out with Alfred and it was making him a little giddy. A bit too ready to toss Bruce over a shoulder and finish what they’d started.

            In the end, Bruce decided things for him. He ended the call, then walked into the kitchen and grabbed Clark’s hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. When it wasn’t at all.

            “Where’s your bedroom?”

            “It’s a one-bedroom apartment,” Clark mumbled, then tugged Bruce alone behind him to his bedroom, where he’d—thank God—made his bed. All the dirty laundry had been put in the hamper too. But the bed looked small and his walls didn’t have much décor. And it felt like it wasn’t nearly enough for their first time.

            “I like it,” Bruce said quietly at his side, and Clark turned to look. Then stared.

            Because Bruce was tugging off his jacket and working his shirt over his head, revealing a lot of mouthwatering skin. He’d already removed his badge and put it on Clark’s dresser. His gun was a reminder of who this man was, who Clark was about to sleep with. And Clark could only think that it made this better. He’d finally met someone that could understand him. That wouldn’t freak out if he needed to leave in the middle of the night or miss birthdays or work long hours. He’d met someone who could be on his same level.

            “Stop thinking,” Bruce whispered, undoing his belt, unclipping the gun to put it beside the badge. “Stop overanalyzing. I’m here because—because I want to be. That’s it.”

            “We’ll have to talk Bruce. We can’t just—”

            “Not now,” Bruce’s voice took on a commanding tone as he got to his briefs, which were of course, black as sin and he lifted a brow at Clark, “You gonna strip too, Kent or is this going to be a one-man show?”

            Clark quickly copied Bruce, stripping down to briefs, removing gun and badge. Then it was just them. It was just hot skin and wet kisses and a frightening amount of _feeling_ considering they were enemies not that long ago.

            Clark savored every sound, every taste, and touch and locked them away for himself. He was careful to keep the part of himself that was far too into this out of the bedroom. And when it was finished, and they were laying side by side, only the thin sheet drawn up over their bodies, Clark was afraid to ask for more. Afraid that Bruce might already regret his decision to come here.

            “That was—incredible,” Bruce hummed, soft and sated. Quiet. It made Clark’s hope flare, his urge to reach over and cuddle stronger. But he wasn’t sure that would be welcomed.

            “Yeah, it was.”

            When Bruce fell silent for long minutes, Clark wondered if the detective had fallen asleep. If that was going to be it. Then Bruce shifted, scooted closer on the bed and pressed his side flush to Clark’s.

            “This alright?” Bruce sounded sleepy. Soft. God, he sounded perfect. And Clark wanted to do it all over again.

            “Yes,” Clark slung an arm over Bruce’s stomach and tried not to sigh with contentment when Bruce responded with tangling their legs and drawing even closer. “More than fine.”

            “Night Clark.”

            Clark grinned in the dark, well aware of Bruce using his first name so easily. Though the other man probably wasn’t. “Night Bruce.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a bit softer, so enjoy the fluff! Because the next will not be so gooey. Our JD Killer is going to be ramping up.

 

            Bruce woke before Clark and for a handful of seconds, couldn’t remember where he was. Or why he was being spooned.

            Then he closed his eyes and sighed with equal parts pleasure and exasperation. He would never be able to say he hadn’t enjoyed himself. Because, fuck, had he ever. But he also knew that what he’d done—had been foolish. Short-sided. He’d obviously been thinking with his dick and not his brain at all. And that was something that Bruce simply didn’t do.

            Bruce didn’t sleep around for a reason. He didn’t do one-night stands, and rarely did he endeavor to risk something that could constitute a relationship. But with Clark—God, with Clark—it was different.

            He shifted, felt Clark’s arm tighten on his bare stomach and stifled the urge to _sink_ into the warmth cocooning him. Instead, he needed to find his pants, get his ass dressed and leave. He needed to go home, get a shower, and then try and reevaluate because obviously his plans of _not_ getting intimately involved with Clark until the conclusion of the JD Killer case had been lit on fire.

            Fuck, he’d lit it on fire and then stomped it to death.

            So, he needed a plan B. He just hadn’t thought of it.

            He was too busy soaking in the warmth of Clark’s skin. Too busy acting like a love-sick puppy as he desperately wanted to nuzzle in and sample just a bit more.

            “Mmmm,” a warm voice hummed into his neck, sending gooseflesh down his arms, “You trying to think of how to get out of here unnoticed?”

            Bruce refused to dignify that with a response, so he kept quiet.

            Clark’s chuckle was sleep-drenched and absurdly delicious sounding. It made Bruce want to roll and kiss him. Made him want to forgo all those positive and responsible things he was thinking about right when he woke up. Mostly because Clark was just as naked as when they’d gone to sleep and having him right up against him, felt really, really, good. Too good.

            “If you stay a little while, I’ll make you breakfast.”

            Bruce shifted, Clark tightened his hold as if to imprison him. It made Bruce’s belly jump. “What sort of breakfast?”

            “Any sort. I still have food in my fridge. It’s a miracle.”

            “Pancakes?”

            Clark kissed the soft skin of his nape, “Do you like plain or chocolate chip? Because I’m partial to the chocolate.”

            “That’s—” Bruce closed his eyes, felt his pulse skip faster and faster when Clark grazed his teeth along his shoulder, “That’s fine.”

            “Great,” Clark withdrew so quickly, the chill left in his wake was immediate and absolutely unwelcome. Bruce stiffened, glaring up at Clark as the other man tugged on a sweatshirt then left.

            It was probably for the best that they didn’t have sex right now anyways. Bruce had to get to work.

            It took Clark only twenty minutes to make good on his promise of pancakes. It was early still, before seven, but Bruce felt itchy like he was going to be late, or had something to do as he sat on Clark’s bar stool, waiting for his plate. He also felt a little silly.  

            The pancakes were good. Better than good actually, and Bruce ate more than he usually allowed, to the point his stomach felt on the distended side. Alfred would be proud. Bruce supposed it was the sort of morning built for indulgences. He’d already made one mistake, why not tack on a few more? Why not share pancakes with Clark and then possibly, if Clark was amenable, they could have one more quick—

            “You’ve been very quiet Bruce.”

            Bruce blinked up from his plate, “I’ve been thinking.”

            “About why we shouldn’t have slept together, no doubt.”

            Bruce shrugged, “You know it was a bit short-sided of us. We should try and wait till after the case.”

            “Maybe. But it happened and despite your earlier sentiments of being able to keep things professional, that boat has sailed.”

            There was a note of steel in Clark’s voice that made Bruce still. Made him feel like he should have gotten dressed for this conversation because briefs and one of Clark’s ratty t-shirts wasn’t enough to cover himself.

            “Sleeping together doesn’t have to mean anything.”

            “You are backtracking already Bruce?”

            “I’m not—”

            “You’re scared of commitment.”

            “I never fucking said that.”

            “Oh?” Clark licked the syrup off his lips and Bruce’s thoughts scattered. _Fuck_ , he was in too deep already. “Because it sounded like that was where this conversation was headed.”

            “It was one night.”

            “It will be lots more. Don’t lie to me and say you didn’t feel that. That you somehow missed that fact. Because I made it pretty damn clear.”

            “I—” Clark leaned into Bruce’s space and kissed him hard on the mouth. There was a warning in those lips, in that tongue that still tasted like breakfast.

            “Don’t, Bruce.”

            Clark left him at the bar, staring blankly at the floral wallpaper that should have been retired back in the seventies when it was probably put on. Then the shower kicked on in the bathroom and Bruce’s stomach lurched.

            The door was left open, steam rolling out in the tiny hall, and Bruce knew it was an invitation.

            And God help him, he couldn’t deny he wanted to accept.

            Once more—just—one more time—then he could go home and think about what to do. He could go over his options and decide if—

            “You need a shower, Bruce?”

            Clark’s head popped around the corner of the bathroom door, his hair slightly curling already, eyes softer than they’d been a moment previous. Bruce wished that Clark never had to wear glasses because they covered his eyes. He swallowed thickly, waited for a beat to make sure his legs would hold him, then came to join Clark.

            It took them a hell of a lot longer than it should have to get clean and Bruce’s hands were so pruned it made him a little crabby when he got dressed—but he’d also never felt so blissed out in his life. He’d never, never felt like this.

            And there was something supremely unsettling about that.

            Something he wasn’t going to address.

            No. He was going to put it into a box, shove it on a tall shelf, and address it later when he’d put it off for as long as humanly possible. Because he was _that_ sort of guy. And emotional entanglements with strong feelings tended to make him second-guess and worry. Tended to make him analyze till he ruined things. And he didn’t—want to ruin this. Not yet.

            _Maybe not ever._

            Clark let him borrow his razor. He had an extra toothbrush under the sink and Bruce made use of it. By eight, they were both dressed, and heading out the door. Bruce was wearing a pair of Clark’s jeans and one of his t-shirts, which felt insanely weird and far too intimate, but at least he was leaving in clean clothes. Clark was a little bigger than him too, so the clothes bagged a bit.

            There was a distinct possibility that everyone at the precinct would know what he’d been up to. That he’d come straight from a hook-up into work.

            He had a hard time caring.

            Especially when Clark kissed him senseless at his car, hooking his fingers in the belt-loops of his pants, drawing Bruce up to his toes just to hold him close, nose to nose. It did all sorts of pleasant things to Bruce’s insides and made him feel hideously romantic. Made him feel like a fucking idiot.

            But he couldn’t say that he minded that either.

            “You gonna call me Bruce?”

            Bruce blinked, forced himself to focus past the warm breath on his cheeks. “Yeah. Most likely.”

            “Not good enough,” Clark mumbled, crushing their mouths together again, making Bruce’s knees almost fucking give out. It was more than a little humbling to realize how easily Clark could make him turn into a pile of mush. The man had serious kissing chops.

            “Yes,” Bruce managed after a moment, “Yes, I’ll call.”

            “And not just about the case.”

            “Not just about the case,” Bruce agreed, swallowing tightly.

            Clark stepped back and smiled, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Will you be offended if I say how cute you look wearing my clothes?”

            Bruce glanced down at the t-shirt, then shook his head, “Not really. But everyone at work is going to know.”

            “That you got laid?”

            “Well—”

            Clark laughed, “They won’t bother you about it. They’re all too scared of you. Your reputation precedes you.”

            “Hah,” Bruce snorted, rolling his eyes, “Have a good day, Boy Scout.”

            Clark grinned, turning to go find his own car, “You too.”

 

 

 

            Wayne didn’t have a good day.

            There was an accident on the interstate, so he sat in traffic for well over an hour. By the time he waltzed into the precinct, late, he drew more than the usual amount of attention and he could just imagine what they were saying about him behind his fucking back.

            He liked keeping his private life, private. But showing up in another man’s clothes sort of negated that possibility.

            All day, Wayne heard the whispers. And it drove him to the brink of his patience level.

            He worked through lunch, had a meeting with his crew about what Clark had said, possibly following a Bundy angle, then got a tip about a green-haired cabbie by the late afternoon. Which turned out to be useless. He drove an hour out of his way, only to hit another dead end.

            But that was police work. You chased every lead and ran down every avenue, even if it meant, hitting every fucking dead end on the way. It was how killers got caught and laws got followed. How civilization went on.

            By the time Wayne pulled into the garage, running on fumes because he forgot to refuel the car, due to a massive migraine, he was prepared to attack anyone and anything that got in his way. He needed some aspirin, a quiet, dark room, and space. Away from everything and everyone.

            The sound of a fight coming from the hall just outside the kitchen meant that wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t Tim and Damian fighting this time, but rather Jason and Tim. And loudly. Curses and insults cracked the air like a whip, barbed with rage. And Wayne immediately took a backseat to Bruce.

            Something was wrong.

            Someone was hurt.

            Frowning, he went straight to the epicenter of the screaming and found Jason purple in the face as he cussed Tim into a corner. Tim who had a bloody lip and a black eye.

            Bruce saw red.

            “Jason Peter Todd! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

            The impact of Bruce’s bellow was twofold. One—Jason whirled, eyes wide and face pale, to gape at Bruce. And two—Timothy immediately burst into tears and ran from the hallway for cover.

            “Explain.”

            “It’s not—it’s not what it looks like.”

            “And what does it look like, Jay?” Bruce growled, hands fisting as he remained a safe enough distance he wouldn’t be tempted to grab his own son by the collar and start swinging. “Because it looked like you attacked Timothy. That you were screaming at him.”

            “I was screaming at him. But I didn’t hurt him, B. I swear to God. I didn’t do that to his face.”

            Bruce tipped his head to the ceiling, felt the air push out of his lungs, and counted to three. “Tell me who did then. Explain what the fuck is going on. Because I’ve had a shit day, Jay. And I’ve got a migraine just itching for me to start hurting someone. And it might as well be you.”

            Jason shifted on his feet, looked down to the floor. “Tim has been dealing with a bully at school for a couple months. It got out of hand and he took a beating.”

            That took the anger right out of his sails. Hit him hard enough in the gut to feel like he’d been sucker punched.

            Bruce’s mouth fell open, “He what? For a couple of months? Why—why am I just now hearing about this?”

            “Because he didn’t want to cause a fuss. And it wasn’t a big deal as long as it hadn’t become physical.”

            Bruce felt a little sick. “But it has now.”

            “Yeah. For a few weeks. He didn’t say anything. Not till he came home like that. Which is why I was pissed at him,” Jason shrugged, “I know it’s not the best way to deal with that. I was just—I was mad because he promised to tell me if it got worse. If it was out of what he could handle.”

            “All of you have been trained. Self-defense classes. MMA. Boxing.”

            “Yeah, but Tim isn’t like the rest of us. He’s—he’s softer, B. And he thought if he ignored it, it would go away faster than if he fought back.”

            Bruce had to lean against the hallway wall because his migraine was pulsing in the back of his eyes and suddenly on top of a fucking awful day, he was also a shit parent. Because he’d had no fucking clue his kid was being bullied until it was this serious.

            “Why wasn’t I contacted by the school? Why hasn’t anyone called me?”

            “It happens outside of school grounds mostly. And no one has reported it.”

            “I need—” Bruce swallowed thickly, forced himself to blink through the red haze of rage he was struggling to put away, “I need a minute, Jay. I apologize for yelling at you.”

            “I would have done the same, old man. I’ll admit, it didn’t look good.”

            Bruce shook his head, “No, no it didn’t.”

            Bruce waited for a half-hour. He took some aspirin, drank a glass of water, kissed Damian on the head and then sought out Tim. Tim had gone straight away to his bedroom and was hunkered down behind his laptop, obscuring most of his face. But he’d left the door open. Which meant he knew Bruce would come and find him and he was either ready to talk—or resigned to the fact that he had no choice.

            “Hey, chum.”

            Tim blinked over the lid of the laptop, one eye bright blue within a circle of bruising, then quickly away. “Hey.”

            “Can I come in?”

            “Yeah,” Tim took a soft breath, wet his lips, then closed his laptop. “Yeah, sure.”

            Bruce took the edge of the bed, like he’d done countless times with his sons and waited a solid minute to get his bearings before speaking. “I’m sorry you’ve been hurt.”

            Tim blinked up at Bruce and frowned, “I’m the idiot who didn’t get help.”

            “You’re never an idiot, Tim. But I do wish you’d told me. I wish I’d been able to help sooner. But now that we know, you know that something needs to be done. It can’t go on like this.”

            Tim nodded, “I know.”

            “Did he just get your eye and your lip?”

            Tim shrugged, “He kicked me too.”

            “Stomach?”

            Tim nodded, and Bruce scooted closer, wrapped his hand around Tim’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’m sorry.”

            Tim’s eyes welled up with tears. “I should be saying sorry. Jay got in trouble because of me.”

            “Jay is fine. He didn’t care. And that was my fault for assuming anything, not either one of yours.”

            “He—” Tim sucked in a shaky breath, “He told me to tell you weeks ago. He said we needed to discuss the options like a family. But I hate—I hate fighting and I just wanted it to go away on its own. I thought it would. But—”

            Bruce frowned, “It didn’t.”

            “No. He got more frustrated that I wasn’t responding to the name calling and the insults. Then he started shoving me. And today,” Tim broke into a little sob and Bruce’s chest ached so badly he felt the sob soul-deep, “this.”

            “We’ll make him stop. We will.”

            “He’s a senior too. He’s bigger than me.”

            “Why has he been targeting you?”

            Tim shrugged, “He calls me fag sometimes. Sometimes he bitches about the Wayne name. That I got the jackpot being taken in by Daddy Warbucks. He’s in the foster system. He ages out in six months when he turns eighteen and I think—I just think he’s mad at everyone. I’m smaller. Quiet. I don’t talk to anyone. I’m an easy target.”

            “You’re strong Tim. The strongest. You’re not easy.”

            The tears running down Tim’s bruised face said that he was, and Bruce wanted blood for blood. He wanted to hunt down this kid and make him pay for ever messing with one of his own. He wanted—

            “I don’t want to press charges.”

            “What?”

            “I don’t want to—”

            “Why, Tim? The only way to make him stop is to press charges. We can prevent this from ever happening again.”

            “Because he’s just a lost kid. He’s got his whole life ahead of him. And he’s sad. Deep down, that’s all he really is. Lost and sad.”

            “Tim—”

            “I’ve already made up my mind, B. It’ll have to stop another way.”

            Bruce went through the motions of their evening routine, but he wasn’t really present. He kept up the polite conversation with his other sons at dinner. He played chase with Damian around the den and they managed to break a very expensive vase. Bath time was filled with laughter and bubbles and then a lot of furious screaming when it was over, and bedtime had to be called. He even sat down and laid out a plan to meet with Timothy’s principal and guidance counselor to see what sort of options there might be, that didn’t include contacting the police and/or physically harming Tim’s offender.

            He made it till everyone had separated off and gone to bed, or to do their own thing. And then he sat on his bed in the dark and silently shook. He shook with rage. He shook with frustration and anger. With pain.

            If he’d been alone, if he’d been sure that he wouldn’t draw attention to himself or get caught, he might have screamed into a pillow or punched a hole in the wall.

            But Bruce did none of those things.

            No. He pulled out his phone. He stared at the screen with blurry eyes and a tightness in his chest that made him feel like he was going to vomit and then he called Clark.

            It made no sense, but it was what he wanted. He wanted to hear Kent’s voice. He needed to hear it.  

            It rang twice. Of course, it fucking did. Because Kent would have his phone on him at all times, like a good Boy Scout.

            _“Bruce, everything alright?”_

            Bruce’s throat felt tight, almost too tight to speak and it took him a moment to get any words out. “You said to call.”

            _“Yeah,”_ there was shifting on the line, papers or slippers on tile. Bruce couldn’t tell which. He closed his eyes and pretended it was slippers. Probably something as stupid as those Looney Toons pajama pants. Maybe Mickey Mouse. It made the corner of his mouth rise. _“I didn’t think you’d follow through so soon.”_

“I—I thought I might—” Bruce scrubbed a hand over his face, “Fuck. I don’t know. Never mind.”

            _“Wait, don’t hang up. I want to listen. Whatever it is.”_

“How do you know there’s something to listen to?”

            _“Bruce—seriously? I feel like I need to maybe get a shirt made up that says ‘I am also a detective’ because you seem to keep forgetting I know things. I see things.”_

“It’s about one of my kids.”

            _“So, tell me.”_

So, Bruce did. He told him about everything that day. About every shitty moment, from start to finish, right up until he came up to his room and nearly had a tantrum like a toddler. And when it was all out, and Clark was still waiting, still attentively listening on the other end, Bruce felt—lighter. He felt like he could breathe again.

            He couldn’t remember the last time someone had done something so helpful for him. That someone had been there for him like that.  

            _“Feel better?”_

“If I say yes, it’s gonna go straight to your fucking head.”

            _“Probably.”_

“Thanks,” Bruce tried the word out, even though it felt awkward and he felt a bit vulnerable admitting how much this meant to him.

            Clark chuckled lightly in response, _“I like listening. I don’t mind in the least. But I’ll expect the favor to be returned if I ever need an ear.”_

Surprisingly, the idea of being Clark’s ear, didn’t sound as bad as it ought to have. It sounded good. “I told the team about your ideas. They seemed to like them.”

            _“You did?”_

“Of course, I did, Clark. They were valid theories. In fact, I’d like to do lunch tomorrow to talk about them. Metropolis alright?”

            Clark’s hesitation on the line made Bruce’s palms grow damp, _“Would you want to meet me at my apartment? It’s more private than a restaurant to discuss case files.”_

Bruce swallowed, as a bolt of anticipation rushed through his center. Was this how it was going to be between them now? Secret rendezvous? Quickies behind closed doors in the back seat of a cruiser? The idea made him feel like a thousand butterflies were swarming his stomach. “Yeah. Makes sense.”

            Bruce knew exactly where Clark’s thoughts had gone and he was right there with the detective. He wanted it too. Wanted it right now. Had wanted Clark again all day. He’d thought of little else outside the irritations of the day. And that was something no else before Clark could boast. No one got beneath the veneer and stubble of Wayne when he was working.

            Until Clark.

            _“Great. One o’clock?”_

“Sure. I’ll email my chief. Let him know, I’ll be out of the office for the afternoon.”

            _“G’night Bruce.”_

Bruce closed his eyes, settled back into his pillows, “Good night Clark.”

            He dreamed of plaid and woke up with a text from Clark that said, _Good morning, Bruce ;) XXX_

Despite the fact that sending kisses in a text was absolutely not his style and made Bruce wince when he stared at it too long, he left the house smiling. And fired off a text of his own.

              _Good morning, Clark._


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did mention it was going to get darker, didn't I? I did? Good. Read on!

            “Close the door, Wayne.”

            Wayne obeyed silently, keeping his expression carefully neutral as he stood in front of his Chief’s desk. There was a small albeit very present, possibility that the chief had caught wind of the rumors circling Kent and Wayne being in a relationship. It was office talk. Easily discounted. Particularly as there was zero evidence.

            Wayne still felt a little sick standing in front of Borden.

            Borden frowned up at him, waved an impatient hand, “Sit down, Wayne. You’re not in trouble for Christ sake.”

            Wayne nodded sharply and quickly sat.

            “I brought you in here because I wanted to prepare you for the shit storm that’s going to hit.”

            “Chief?”

            Borden rifled through his desk, pulled out a piece of white paper, with brownish stains on a corner that had been sealed into a evidence bag, then handed it over. Wayne took it carefully, feeling the light weight on his palms, the plastic crinkle as he blinked at the typed script.

 

            **I am not John Doe. I am better than him.**

**I am not nothing. I am something.**

**I am everything.**

**I’ll take another and another and another until the flesh fills me up and You all see what I am. And then you’ll all see that there is no need to cry. No**

**need to scream.**

**You only need to laugh. And laugh. And laugh. Laugh like me.**

**Trade a face. Find a smile. Take a soul—and laugh. I won’t stop. I will NEVER stop.**

**-The Killer Who Laughs**

            It wasn’t a lengthy manifesto. It was in plain type, awkwardly spaced, and looked about as organized as the man himself. _Not at all_. The word frenzied came to mind. And Wayne knew, without a doubt, the letter in his hands was from the JD Killer.

            “It’s him.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Is this—”

            Borden nodded, “Yeah, it’s blood. From the last victim. We had it confirmed in the lab.”

            “When?”

            “Twelve hours ago.”

            “He doesn’t like his name,” Wayne mused, reading over the lines, feeling his stomach pitch, “he’s angry that the media can’t get it right. That we aren’t getting it right. What his motives are.”

            “The media was given the letter first. It was sent by courier to GNN and I’ve only managed to sanction them for a few hours. I wanted to get ahead of this, try and mitigate the fallout, but I don’t think that’s going to be possible.”

            “He’s going to start a panic.”

            “Hasn’t he already?” Borden growled, plucking out a toothpick from his pocket to munch angrily. He’d been cigarette-free for six months and it was looking like this time it might actually stick.

            “This will be worse. It’ll be like the Zodiac killer. Like—” Wayne paused, frowned.

            “What?”

            “He doesn’t know who he is. He literally doesn’t know. It’s why he keeps using other killer’s modes of operation. Like Clark said, he’s probably using what Bundy did to capture them. He’s taking a page from Dahmer by punishing the victims for his childhood abuse, and now this? It’s Zodiac, taunting the police, looking for validation of his skills as a killer. He doesn’t know. He’s searching.”

            Borden looked a little pale. “Fucking psychopath is what he is.”

            “Yes,” Wayne nodded, “Can I keep this?”

            “It’s yours. News breaks on this at lunch. If you want to converse with your team before coming up with a press release of your own, I suggest you get a move on. I gave you all the time I could manage.”

            “Thanks, Chief.”

            “Wayne.”

            Wayne looked up from the letter, “If we don’t make serious headway on this case in the next weeks, I’m going to be forced to call in the FBI and let them handle it. I’ve given you as much time as I can. Am I making myself clear?”

            Wayne could only nod in response. His jaw was too tight to speak.

            He hurried out of the office and grabbed his coat off the back of his chair on the way.

            “McQuaid. Bryan. With me!” Wayne snapped the command, garnering their attention on his way to the elevators. “We’re going to Metropolis.”

           

 

***

 

            Clark got wind of the impending media circus about ten minutes before Bruce’s text. He was bringing in the team for an emergency meeting to decide on a media release of their own. They had precious time to release a statement that could mitigate some of the fallout.

            It was a dance Clark had done too many times to count. Occasionally, he seriously resented free press.

            Bruce showed up with McQuaid and Bryan in tow and bearing gifts of coffee and bagels. Clark had already grabbed Gibbons and Mince and they were waiting in a conference room, papers spread out, whiteboard pulled over.

            “Forgive my ignorance,” Gibbons mused, “But how does this hurt us? The public already knows about the JD Killer. It’s been a hot item on the news for months.”

            “This is different,” Bruce spoke deadly soft as he started scribbling madly on the whiteboard. Clark had to squint to read it. The handwriting was too small. And it was obvious Bruce was feeling a bit—prickly. “Because the JD Killer is looking for something from us. A reaction. Notoriety. He’s been asked to be called something different. He doesn’t like the moniker they’ve given him. And he wants a show. He wants the attention on him, not on his victims. And we need to work with that because if we don’t, the killing is going to get worse.”

            “Worse? How?”

            “We’re due for a body in two days, Wayne,” Mince frowned, “What’s worse than that?”

            “He’s going to start making this into as big of a production as he can. The greater the backlash in the media and the terror on the streets, the bigger the payoff. And if he doesn’t get the proper response, his timeline might speed up. Hell, he might even get bold enough to kill more than one victim at a time.”

            “He has to know that could mean he’s likely to get caught quicker.”

            Bruce’s jaw flexed, and his eyes drifted briefly to Clark’s. It made Clark’s chest twinge. “Yeah. He knows. And that’s the problem with killers like him. They are a different breed than the Joe off the street who kills his ex-wife because she’s letting someone else fuck her. This guy kills because he’s desperate to feel something. He’ll keep killing because he’s looking for it and he’ll never find it. Every kill brings him closer, but not close enough. And deep inside, he wants someone to catch him. It’s what these sorts of killers do.”

            “Should we—” Bryan looked abruptly sheepish when he had Bruce’s full attention and had to look down at the table to gather his strength, “Shouldn’t we call in the FBI? Isn’t this more of their sort of thing?”

            There was a brief moment, where Clark was concerned for Bryan’s safety. But it passed quickly. Bruce was a professional. Sure, he cussed a lot and looked like he could kick someone’s ass to Tuesday, but he was always in control. He was careful. “Calling in the FBI would mean all of the hours you’ve been putting in, all the interviews, and the slogging through paperwork—is for nothing. They take the reins and they’ll dump every one of us off the case. You’ll never get to even sniff the fucking collar. Do you think you can sit on the sidelines after everything and not care?”      

            “I never said—”

            “Wayne,” Clark heard himself say the name, but he wasn’t entirely sure what the hell he was thinking by stepping in between the two. Bruce looked furious at the interruption. “Can I—can I talk to you for a moment? Alone?”

            Bruce blinked, looked down at the table and then at the other detectives, curiously keeping their gazes down and away from the pair, then stalked to the door. Clark caught up to him a few steps outside and ignored the vicious look he got when he guided them towards a storage closet that officers had been sneaking smokes in for years. It smelled like stale cigarettes, body odor, and cleaning supplies. But it was a private place to speak. And he closed the door tightly, flipping the lock the moment they were inside.

            Then he turned and faced Bruce only to find the man near shaking with rage.

            “What the fuck do you think you’re doing Kent?”

            “Is it Kent when you’re pissed at me? Clark in bed?”

            Bruce’s eyes flared in warning and Clark ignored it.

            “Bruce, you can’t snap at the team just because they aren’t as invested in the case as you are. You’ve been working far longer on catching the JD Killer than they have. And to be honest, Bryan is right. The FBI might be better suited to catch this guy. They have—”

            There was no warning. No preparation. Not even a blip, before Bruce, slammed into him. He crushed Clark so hard into the door his teeth knocked together, and he bit his tongue. Coppery warmth filled his mouth and he hissed at the sting. Bruce didn’t seem to care. He was too pissed to notice and suddenly, Clark was pissed too. He braced one forearm on Clark’s collarbones, the threat of choking implicit and the other beside his head holding his weight off Clark’s chest.

            “Don’t you fucking dare say that they could do better!”

            “Your ego isn’t going to catch this guy, Bruce! Resources are. And the FBI has it.”

            Bruce’s face morphed into a snarl, “I know him. I know him better than anyone. He’s mine.”

            “Yours?” Clark breathed, suddenly absurdly turned on by Bruce’s warmth and the rage and maybe the fact that he’d never seen Bruce lose control like this. It was hot.

            “Yes, he’s mine. I’ve been trying to catch him for months. I’ve been standing over a dead body with no face too many times to just let it go now and—” Bruce’s eyes darted to Clark’s mouth, then froze, “You’re bleeding.”

            Abruptly, all the pressure on Clark’s chest was gone and Bruce had backed up until he hit the opposite wall, knocking a bottle of multi-purpose spray to the floor. It burst open and immediately overpowered the scent of old cigs with lemon.  

            “I’m alright. I just bit my tongue, Bruce. It’s OK.”

            Bruce blinked at him, all the anger gone, in exchange for a different emotion. Bewilderment, maybe. Clark wasn’t sure he liked the look on him. “I hurt you.”

            “ _I_ hurt me. It’s not a big deal.”          

            “I—”

            “Bruce, come on. I knew you were pissed when I brought you in here. It’s a small room. Things got heated. You didn’t hurt me. Not really.”

            Bruce suddenly couldn’t look at him and that made Clark—what? Mad? Pissed off that Bruce acted as if he was some sort of flimsy flower who couldn’t take a tiny bit of roughing up? Maybe.

            Clark licked his lips, nodding softly. “We need to get back to work.”

            “The press release—Clark—I’m sorry.”

            Clark’s mouth twitched, “Don’t worry about it.”

            It was a hell of a shock when he turned to go and found Bruce stopping him. Found Bruce stretching up to kiss him, soft and sweet, an apology laced in those lips. When he drew back, Bruce’s lips were shiny with blood and Clark must have been a masochist but that was almost as much of a turn on as Bruce snapping and shoving him into the door.

            “I’m sorry.”

            “Stop. I’m fine. You care about catching this guy. I admire that tenacity. I get it.”

            “He’s—I was the first detective put on the case. I’ve been there since the beginning and I need to catch him, Clark. I _need_ to be the one standing there, putting the cuffs on him, locking him behind bars. I need it.”

            Clark brushed a hand over Bruce’s hair, wiped the blood of his bottom lip with his thumb, “I get it. It’s Okay.”

            Bruce looked down at his shoes and for an impossible minute, Clark was certain that the other man was blushing. The absurdity of standing in a storage closet, with Bruce Wayne, who looked edible in his navy blue V-neck and dark wash jeans with that badge hanging around his neck—was making Clark lightheaded. It was making him feel a little reckless.

            It could also be the cleaner gassing them out.

            “We had to cancel plans for lunch.”

            Bruce’s head jerked up, “Clark—no. We can’t do _that_ in here.”      

            “Why not? It’s got a lock. The team will expect us to fight it out at least for a few minutes and I can—I can make it fast. I could make it fast for you too.”

            “Fuck, Clark,” Bruce groaned, now really blushing, “I don’t do this shit. I don’t fuck in a closet at work. It isn’t my thing.”

            “But you want to.”

            Bruce lifted a dubious brow, “I want you. There’s a difference there. Minute it may be, but there is a difference.”

            “I want you too.”

            “Don’t look at me like that—like—God, please—just don’t,” Bruce panted out the words as Clark’s mouth descended on him and started to devour the other detective’s neck and behind his ear. Bruce sighed, almost, almost giving in, then squirmed away. “No. Not here. I need to keep work—as work, Clark. I need you to—I need you to respect that.”

            Clark straightened, studying Bruce for a moment and found he understood that. It made sense. It was just like Bruce to need those boundaries firmly in place and if that was what he needed, then so be it. He could cope.

            “Alright.”

            “Alright?” Bruce swallowed, “Just like that?”

            “Yeah,” Clark shrugged, “I can control myself, Bruce. And I’m a patient man. If you want to keep sex at home and work and work, then I understand.”

            “You understand.”

            Clark smirked, pressed a light kiss to Bruce’s mouth then straightened his shirt before unlocking the storage closet to leave. “Yup. We have a press release to write. You ready?”

            Bruce’s wary look was a reward Clark had no intention of ever sharing. He liked making Bruce uncomfortable. He liked making him guess. He’d never been in a relationship where he got to be the more emotionally competent and it was a little thrilling. It was good.

            So, he smiled, ignored the urge to hold hands with Bruce as they headed back to the conference room, and forced his brain to stay in work-mode. For Bruce.

 

 

           

            “Well,” Bruce smirked, “That was fast.”

            “You were the one who wanted to wait till after work. Eight hours in a conference room with you becomes a whole other kind of torture. I might have taken that out on you a little.”

            “I’m not complaining,” Bruce murmured, rolling off the bed to rummage around for his discarded clothes.

            “You’re leaving?”

            “I’ve got to go home. I have kids, Clark. I have responsibilities outside of fucking and working.”

            “Ouch.”

            Bruce looked over his shoulder and sighed, sitting on the edge of the bed still naked and adorable. Still such a welcome sight despite sometimes being a world-class jerk. “Sorry. That came out wrong. It’s more than fucking.”

            “Is it?”

            Bruce looked down at his lap but nodded, “I’m not ready to tell the kids anything yet. They’ve never seen me serious about someone.”

            Clark’s chest squeezed, and he leaned up to wrap Bruce in a backward hug. Bruce responded by tipping his head to rest on Clark’s shoulder, letting himself go lax in his arms. It was more than words could express to Clark. It was a sign of how much Bruce was coming to trust Clark. And it soothed better than an apology could.

            They sat still for long minutes, skin to skin, sharing heat and breaths, lazily holding each other. It was how Clark always pictured finding someone he could really share his life with. And Bruce—Bruce was that person. Someone he could trust and love.

            Someone he had probably been falling for, for years.

            He just didn’t think to share that particular epiphany would be very smart. Bruce would run if he felt like it was moving too quickly. That much, Clark was certain of.

            “There’s no rush.”

            “You don’t mean that,” Bruce murmured, sounding sleepy after sitting still for so long. He’d dropped his jeans and his hands were loose fists on his thighs. Clark couldn’t see, but he’d bet those piercing gray eyes were closed.

            “I do.”

            “I’ll—I’ll have you meet them soon. It’s just with the case, and with everything that’s been going on—it feels a little—”

            “Overwhelming.”

            “Yes,” Bruce breathed out, turning his head to kiss Clark’s jaw. Clark’s heart might have melted on the spot.

            “You better not sit here for much longer. You’re almost asleep.”

            Bruce chuckled, and it vibrated through his back into Clark’s chest. It felt decidedly intimate and welcome. “I feel like my limbs are five hundred pounds”

            “I could carry you to your car.”

            Bruce snorted, “I would rather die.”

            “You would not,” Clark shook his head, shoving Bruce a little to help him get going. “Come on. If you’re going to head off, you need to move. I’ll send you off properly. Kiss you at the door like an old movie. I might even dip you romantically.”

            Clark didn’t dip Bruce, because Bruce would probably have tried to swing at him and Clark imagined that right hook was nasty as all get-out, but he did kiss him slowly. He did comb back black hair, and press kisses to those crow feet that made Bruce look a tad distinguished and he did murmur how he’d had a good time.

            Bruce left looking a little hazy. A little starry-eyed. And that was good enough for Clark. At least for now. The rest would have to come later.

 

 

            They got a body three days later than the expected timeline. But this time, it was different. All the right hallmarks. Missing face, teeth, and fingerprints. White. Male. Late twenties, early thirties.

            But one thing was added. And it made Clark’s skin feel too tight and his stomach hollow. Made him feel sicker than usual when standing over a dead body.

            It always seemed like a body either got found at the butt-crack of dawn or in the middle of the night. Today it was the middle of the night. Just after midnight to be exact. Standing in sweats, with gritty eyes and a gummy mouth, put Clark in a poor mood. Even seeing Bruce climb out of his car with a heavy five o’clock shadow, in his own sweats, did nothing to mitigate the sour twist in his chest.

            When Bruce came to join him, they stared silently at the body for a few minutes, both lost in thought, both distracted by the newest addition. It blared brightly like a neon sign on the body.

            Bruce squatted for a better look, then blew out a breath, “Fuck.”

            “Yeah, it reeks.”

            “Probably been sitting here in the sun for the last three days. Why the fuck didn’t he make sure we found it? Why not make it bigger? Especially with _that_ little gift?”

            The face had been removed, just like the others, but this time, the JD Killer had left behind the lips and skin around the mouth, putting it back on over the gaping mouth in a mockery of a smile.

            “He made sure to put a smile on his victim.”

            “The Killer Who Laughs. Fucking sadistic mother-fucker.”

            “Bruce,” Clark cleared his throat, careful to breathe through his mouth, the smells were overwhelming, “You said yourself it would get worse. He wants to be noticed. He wants to be special. To distinguish himself from the others.”

            Bruce looked like he was going to be sick, “Yeah, well. It’s too fucking early for shit like that and I’m fucking tired.”

            “I hear you.”

            They worked the scene silently. Both with notepads out, jotting down thoughts. Bruce asked a few questions of the ME a few of the CSI still clustered around the taped off scene. Evidence was separated into baggies. Once the body was put into a bag, everyone started to clear off and Bruce bee-lined it for his car.

            “Hey,” Clark stopped him from leaving, by grabbing his elbow, “My apartment is close. You could sleep a couple hours there and then head in.”

            Bruce blinked at him, “There is no way in hell I’m showing up back at the station in another man’s clothes a _gain._ ”

            “You won’t have to. I washed the ones you left behind.”

            “You what?”

            “You heard me. Are you in, or are you out, crabby-ass?”

            Bruce grumbled some uncomplimentary things under his breath, but eventually nodded and followed Clark back to his apartment. Once there, they piled into bed and passed out almost immediately.

            Clark supposed only another homicide detective could sleep like the dead after having spent the better part of the last two hours examining a gruesome corpse. It was what made finding Bruce so special.

            Clark woke to the sound of his alarm at six and blurrily made out the shape of Bruce’s shoulders under the covers. At some point in the last hours, the man had stolen every ounce of the covers and then rolled, so he was a burrito. Clark had slept in his sweats, so he’d not noticed in the least. In fact, Bruce’s blatant blanket stealing might have saved him from sweating to death with the added body heat in the bed. Clark poked at the fluffy caterpillar to his right and laughed when it growled back in response.

            “It’s six. If you want a shower before you go, you better get up and move, Bruce.”           

            “Fuck off.”

            “Suit yourself.”

            Clark got up, showered, shaved, brewed a pot of coffee. It was a quarter to seven when Bruce stumbled out of the bedroom with bloodshot eyes, hissing and sputtering like a cat. Ten minutes later, he emerged a different person. Shaved. Hair wetted down. Eyes puffy, but clear.

            He accepted Clark’s offer of coffee gratefully and gulped it down on the spot.

            “I’m getting the feeling, you are not a morning person.”

            “Where’d you get that idea, Sherlock?”

            “You hog the covers.”

            Bruce squinted at him, “You snore like a chainsaw. I don’t know how I slept at all.”

            Clark smiled pleasantly over his mug and finished it off quietly. “I made you toast. It’s the most I can do on the way out the door.”

            Bruce stared dumbly at the paper towel wrapped bread, he was offered, then scowled as Clark left him and headed for the door to stuff on shoes. He didn’t appear to be able to manage culturally polite things like ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ yet. And Clark admittedly found that endearing. Not the least bit insulting.  

            “It’s Friday. I thought you should know I’ll be out of town for a couple days. I can come back if something develops quickly, but I don’t want to have to cancel.”

            “Where are you going?” Bruce grumbled, sitting on the couch to stuff his feet into his tennis shoes. He’d dressed in the Henley and jeans he’d left the last time he’d slept over. And it fit him perfectly. Showed off that tapered waist and those broad shoulders. They’d never talked about it, but it was obvious Bruce went to the gym often. Clark was a gym rat himself, so he understood the draw. And was obviously pleased with the results.

            “Kansas. My family is there.”

            “Oh.”

            “I like to visit once every other month. It’s a bit of a drive, but worth it.”

            Bruce stood, smoothed out the wrinkles in his shirt then pulled on his badge. His gun was already clipped onto his belt and nearly blended into the black of his shirt. He could be the poster on a movie set for some crime thriller show.  

            “We’ve never talked about your family. Do you have siblings?”

            “Nope. Just me. My parents are a little on the older side. They couldn’t have kids and I just—well, I’m adopted,” Clark flashed an uncomfortable grin at Bruce, “But I never knew any different. They raised me since I was just a baby. They’re my parents.”

            “You don’t know your biological parents.”

            “It was a closed adoption.”

            Bruce swallowed, “Does that bother you?”

            “Not at all. It used to be a curiosity, but then I realized I didn’t really want to know. My Ma and Pa raised me, not the people who ‘made’ me. And those other people don’t really matter.”

            “That’s—that’s nice to know.”

            Clark tipped his head, then felt his mouth tug into a smile as he finally understood Bruce’s genuine interest. “Because of Damian.”

            “Well—it’s a consideration. His mother was a terrible person. And I have no idea who his father was. He was left at my door. It’s been a struggle to decide if I should ever tell him differently.”

            “It’s not an easy choice, Bruce. But you’re his dad. That’s not going to change.”

            Bruce shrugged, “That’s—that’s sweet of you to say. Thank you.”

            It was on the tip of his tongue to invite Bruce to come along to Kansas. To have him meet the family. But that would be a disastrous invitation and an unwelcome one.

            _One step at a time._

            “I’ll text you,” Clark kissed Bruce lightly, then opened the apartment door, “Try not to miss me too badly.”

            Bruce rolled his eyes, “Jesus, Kent.”

            Clark could only laugh in response.

 

***

           

            He liked to stay nearby and watch when the blue and red lights showed up. He liked to see how the police worked the scene. How they startled, every fucking time when they found the body.

            When they found his artwork.

            He liked the dark-haired detective from Gotham better than the one from Metropolis. There was something about him. Something—familiar—or was it simply stimulating? That made him want to come out of hiding and put a smile on the face he’d come to memorize.

            He wanted Detective Wayne’s face. He wanted to put it on in front of his big mirror at home. Match the flesh up to his bones, feel the damp wet of it clinging and morphing.

            To become like him. To _feel_ like him.

            He liked to imagine wearing his face while he fucked Kent. Like Wayne was doing. They thought they were sneaky. They thought no one knew, but he was aware of it all. He was smart. He was cunning.

            He watched. And waited.

            He preyed on his victims with lust turning his blood into acid and his heart slamming so hard it felt like it would burst up his throat. Each kill felt better than the last. But it was never enough.

            Not enough.

            He needed more.

            He just needed—maybe he needed the detective under his knife? Maybe he needed Wayne beneath him screaming out as he was plunged into? Maybe?

            Or no. Someone else.

            It might not feel as good with a face he knew so well. It might be too fast. Maybe he wanted someone else first and then—yes, then, he would do Wayne. Maybe Kent first?

            No.

            Maybe—he thought of all the faces he knew. All the faces that didn’t know him. He thought of his own face, hollow and empty, unknown in the always fucking staring back at him in the mirror and he the idea came to him quickly.

            It made him hard. Made his skin itch and his hands shake.

            First the son, then the father. He just needed to plan it right. He needed to maybe take the edge off, so he wouldn’t make any mistakes. A couple more kills, maybe, maybe, then he’d—he’d take the boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I'm not writing creepy criminal thrillers, I'm writing romance! Find my novel Dayton's Island, the first in a romantic suspense trilogy, on Amazon. For sale in both paperback and digital formats. OR, check out my website at fillysaltz.wixsite.com/author, to get more information about upcoming projects!   
> Thanks!  
> -Felicia Saltzman


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My son was sick. Then I was sick. Then the whole house. We've been swimming in cold plague for a solid week. I'm so glad to be feeling better and to have my darling boy, back at school. Because that means writing again! Not just on here, but on all my projects. I've been a deadbeat with it all for days. 
> 
> Here, have a new chapter finally. :) (I probably missed some edits, but, eh--you guy's can handle it, right? <3 )

            It was incredible how the normality of life went on. How daily tasks were completed, teeth were brushed, showers were taken, coffees were made, children picked up from school. Life, in all its bland activity, cared very little for the blips of abnormality that speed bumped its progress.

            Every year, 1.5 million people visited the ER for assault in the United States. Twenty thousand deaths reported were homicides. Fourteen thousand out of those twenty were gun-related homicides. Only an estimated twenty-five to fifty of the murderers operating in the United States at any given time, were serial killers. Or so the FBI estimated.

            The JD Killer, in all his glory, was a tiny insect in the grand scheme of things. But a very lethal one.

            Clark supposed that was why it made him feel a little—petty—to be worrying about what to wear to dinner with his boyfriend? Lover? Unlabeled, but obviously something serious, something?

            In the tiny bubble of Clark’s existence, standing in his apartment, staring at himself in his janky mirror with a comb in hand, it felt paramount. It felt bigger than the murders and the statistics and all the other little ugly things that were going on outside his four walls. It felt a lot bigger.

            Because it was Bruce.

            And this wasn’t just any dinner.

            It was dinner with the family.

            It only took Bruce the weekend to call him Monday night and ask Clark to dinner on Wednesday. The phone call had been a bit of a surprise. And then nice, because despite it only having been a couple of days, Clark had missed Bruce and Clark could easily admit that falling asleep to the sound of Bruce snoring over the phone was pretty much—perfect.

            Everything he might have imagined a budding, serious, not-to-be labeled, relationship to be.

            Clark rolled his eyes, tried combing back the stubborn cowlick right in the middle of his hairline then gave up. It wasn’t like Bruce didn’t see him every other day with it hanging in his face. He could cut it off, buzz his hair shorter. But Clark didn’t want that. So, the stubborn slightly curled piece in the front stayed.

            Clark first chose slacks and a tie, then decided that was far too formal for a Wednesday night dinner and he needed to make a good impression. He didn’t want Bruce’s children to think he was a, A—a gold digger, or B—a total douche.

            So, he chose middle ground and went with plaid, dark-wash jeans and boots. Comfortable. Approachable. Very, him. Very Kansas. Which was actually a good thing, because it was a big part of who he was as a person. Bruce had mentioned once he liked the plaid too.

            Clark didn’t want to assume he might be sleeping over. But he still packed an overnight bag. A small one. Just a couple essentials. If the night did go well, and Bruce asked, he wouldn’t be able to sneak out wearing Bruce’s clothes. Bruce was smaller than him. Not by much, but enough that Clark would probably look like a terrifying stuffed sausage in too short of pants. So, he went on the safe side and packed an extra outfit, toothbrush, and razor.

            He didn’t think that was being too optimistic. He was planning for success. Even if he was, just a hair, terrified.

            The drive to Wayne manor felt long. But Clark welcomed it.

            He focused on what he was going to say. Teasing out his answers to make sure they were appropriate. In the last ten minutes, he shifted to casework and silently went over the JD profile. Compiling data, pros, and cons, jotting notes in his brain for later use. He had a photographic memory, so if he imagined writing himself a note, he could recall it later as if he had.

            By the time he pulled into the gravel loop of the manor, Clark was feeling a little sick. His palms were sweaty on the steering wheel and he had to take long breaths to psych himself up enough to get out of the damn car.

            Bruce probably would have laughed at him.

            His apprehension only got worse when instead of Bruce answering the door, it was his butler. Alfred. And right behind one of his pant legs, peering out with bright suspicious eyes, was Damian.

            Clark waved at Damian and received a scowl for his trouble.

            “Good evening, Master Clark. Come in, please.”

            “Thanks,” Clark tried a smile and followed the two inside the entryway. Nothing had really changed since his last visit. The house was still opulent and over the top. It smelled old and expensive and gleamed prettily like a living museum. But it also looked lighter and more lived in than before.

            There were sneakers left out at the bottom of the stairs. A coat was hung on the banister, casually denoting someone had been too lazy to put it away. Damian had a bag of open Teddy Grahams in one hand and had lost a couple. Someone had crushed one into powder on the carpeting.

            Alfred’s expression looked pinched when he noticed the mess, but he quietly ignored it and offered to lead Clark to the study instead. For refreshments of course.

            “Dinner will be ready shortly.”

            “Thank you.”

            “I’m afraid it will not be anything spectacular, as it’s midweek supper. The boys get to choose and the vote for macaroni and cheese was unanimous.”

            Clark chuckled, “I can easily get on board with that.”

            Alfred’s mouth twitched as they reached the study door, “I’m sure you can,” he then turned to his shadow and sighed down at the little boy. “Will you be staying or coming with me, Master Damian?”

            Damian seemed to shrink into himself as he reached for Alfred’s hand. Clark thought it was absurdly endearing to see how attached the boy was to the butler. It was clearly more like a grandfather and grandson role than anything else. Extremely familial in nature.

            Bruce had said Alfred was more than a butler. He’d said, family. And it showed.

            “I’ll see you at dinner, squirt.”

            Damian’s nose wrinkled, but he held Clark’s eyes for a long moment, then nodded, careful to keep Alfred as a barrier between them. Clark was going to count that as a success. Now, he had three more kids to meet. And if that didn’t have the vomit clawing back up his throat…

            Clark watched the pair amble off towards the kitchen for a moment, then opened the study in hopes of finding Bruce. And he did.

            Every knot in Clark’s stomach, all the tension in his shoulders and spine, loosened when Bruce turned from a boy to look at who’d come in. The smile started in Bruce’s eyes first and was soft as feathers on his mouth. Not quite a full smile. But there.

            And Clark almost bounded across the room to hug the man.

            “Clark,” Bruce’s mouth twitched further into the smile, “I’m glad you could come. Let me introduce you.”

            Clark easily came close, brushing knuckles with Bruce as he stood at his side, though not taking his hand and forced his gaze to where it was needed. Bruce indicated the boy he’d been speaking to first, and Clark immediately knew it was Timothy.

            Just like Bruce had described.

            Narrow features, bright blue eyes, shaggy hair. He looked young and innocent, but the eyes were old. And assessing.

            “Hello. You must be Tim.”

            Timothy smiled, “Correct. Bruce told you about us then?”

            “Of course, I did,” Bruce rolled his eyes, “Jason, Dick,” he called softly, drawing the pair of young men who’d been looking out the windows, talking with their heads bent like they were telling secrets. When they came to join them, standing in front of the empty fireplace, Clark had the distinct impression of being surrounded by predators.

            And it was an—uncomfortable position.

            “This is my second eldest, Jason,” Bruce smiled at Jason then shifted and gestured to other shorter man, “And this is Dick. The oldest.”

            “It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”

            Dick’s smile was warm, his teeth very white and very straight. But his grip was calloused and a little too tight to be friendly when Clark took it. “Pleasure to meet you. Bruce hasn’t told us a whole lot. But there’s been a few things rumoring about.”

            “Dick,” Bruce warned, his smile falling, “I invited Clark to get to know all of you. I told you we’re—we’re seeing each other.”

            “Yes,” Jason smirked, “you said that, old man. But you never said you were dating a cop.”

            “He’s a detective.”

            “Same thing. This is interesting.”

            “Jay—”

            “I’ll be nice,” Jason shook his head, moving to offer his hand to shake Clark’s too, “I’m pleased as punch to meet you. Anyone willing to deal with this old man’s sour ass, is a gem in my book.”

            Surprisingly, it appeared Jason was genuine and his handshake merely firm. Nothing like the clear warning in Dick’s.

            _Tread carefully._

            Clark forced a smile and rocked back on his heels, “So, you work for BPD, Dick? Is that what I heard?”

            Dick lifted a brow, “Yeah. I’m hoping to make detective soon.”       

            “That’s great news.”

            Dick snorted, “Tell him that.”

            Clark lifted a brow, glanced briefly at Bruce then quickly switched topics, “Tim, you’re in high school?”

            “Yes, I graduate soon though.”

            “Early?”

            Tim shrugged, “I have enough credits.”

            “Wow. That’s impressive.”  
            Jason laughed, “Yeah, kid’s a real nerd. Sometimes we think he does it just to make the rest of us look bad.”

            Tim took the ribbing easily, rolling his eyes.

            And the conversation lurched forward. Bruce offered little commentary. It seemed he was content to watch how Clark maneuvered his way through talking to his children. Which left him a little mentally exhausted and peppered with sweat by the time Alfred came by and claimed that supper was ready.

            The dining room was different than Clark imagined it. Not as formal maybe.

            Yes, it had the glossy oak table with lace centerpiece and a small pot of roses. But the walls were decorated in black and white family photos. And the windows letting in the dwindling sunlight were big and warm. With all the chatter and the smells of yeasty rolls and macaroni and cheese filling the room, the space felt homey. It felt very human and normal. Very special.

            And Clark had been invited into it all. By Bruce.

            Clark was seated beside Bruce and almost the minute they were sat, Clark reached underneath the table and found Bruce’s knee. Bruce quietly offered his hand in return and they wound their fingers together. It was more grounding than anything else had been. And like a stamp of approval, it made Clark’s efforts feel worth it.

            He got Damian to speak a few words. He liked dinosaurs. Especially the Brontosaurus. And he was extremely fond of lining up his collection on every surface of his bedroom. By mid-meal, Clark had garnered an invitation to see the collection and it made him beam.

            Timothy sat quietly like Bruce and looked to enjoy simply watching and taking in the room. Dick and Jason were loud and often argued over silly things but were clearly, very close. Jason on more than one occasion got warned to watch his language by Alfred, who puttered in and out during supper with more drink or more rolls. But the man never sat.

            They made for a lovely picture of a loving family. Loud, silly, interrupting and occasionally rude. But loving.  

            Clark enjoyed himself and that was better than he could have imagined.

            “So, does this mean no more fights at the annual baseball tournament?”

            Bruce was finished eating and was sitting back in his seat, looking a little tired, but the corner of his mouth was lifted. He’d not let go of Clark’s hand under the table either.

            “We’re still on rival police departments.”

            “But the fights—they were legendary,” Jason added.

            Clark shrugged, “We still fight.”

            There was an awkward pause, then Jay grinned, “I’ll bet you do.”

            “Jay…”

            Jason lifted both hands in surrender, “Just saying, old man. Maybe you’ve met your match.”

            Bruce’s eyes flickered to Clark, then back, “Maybe. Could you give Damian a bath tonight for me?”

            Jason blinked, clearly trying to switch gears as fast as Bruce had, then shrugged, “Sure. I don’t have a problem with that. As long as the demon doesn’t.”

            Clark choked on his water, “Demon?”

            “It’s a—” Bruce’s face had gone becomingly pink, “It’s a terrible nickname. Jason isn’t supposed to use it.”

            “Oh, come on, B. Kid loves it.”

            “I do not,” Damian sneered from his seat, lifting himself so he was standing in his chair like a king, hands fisted on his hips, “I deserve respect.”

            “Right. Respect. Can you believe this kid? Like he’s some fu—some royal and we’re his servants.”

            “Well—”

            “Damian,” Bruce glared, “Sit down. Standing at the table like that is rude. And Jason, please, don’t make things worse. You know he can get worked up over—small things. Stop pushing.”

            “I’m going to help Alf with dishes,” Dick pushed back from the table, “It was nice meeting you, Clark.”

            Clark nodded, “Nice meeting you too. Maybe we could do this again sometime.”

            Dick’s eyes had warmed some over supper and he looked less on edge. Less ready to kick Clark out the door on his ass. “Yeah. Maybe.”

            Timothy sighed, wiped his mouth with his napkin, then stood as well. “I’ve got homework. I hope you come again soon. Maybe next week?” there was possibly a wink in there, but Clark couldn’t tell past the sleepiness in those eyes.

            “I’d like that. It was nice meeting you.”

            “Come on, demon. Let’s get a bath,” Jason stood up like he was preparing for war. Which, by the look of anger on Damian’s face, was a strong possibility.

            “I’m not a demon. I’m a boy. I’m a big boy.” 

            “Don’t be so literal, kiddo.”

            Bruce growled low and agitated, “He can’t help it, Jay. We’ve talked about this. Everything is literal to him.”

            Jason blinked at Bruce, then shrugged when he realized what Bruce meant, whatever that meant, “Right. Sorry. Come on Dami, let’s get a bath.”

            “Mr. Damian.”

            “What?”

            Damian glowered, jumping off his chair to walk to the door where he stood with an upstretched hand waiting patiently for Jason to take it. The picture of a royal awaiting his escort. “Mr. Damian. My name is Mr. Damian.”

            Bruce rolled his eyes, mouthed, _humor him_ , at Jason then watched as his second eldest held in a laugh and corrected himself. The pair left only a couple of minutes later and with it, took the remaining noise right out of the walls.

            Dishes were left empty on the table. The smell of baked cheese and yeast lingered. Another normal snapshot within four walls. Clark felt pleasantly full and not nearly ready to say goodbye. He hoped Bruce wasn’t going to say the night was over already. But it was a strong possibility. One that Clark would expect from Bruce. Even asking him over, to share his children like this, had been a huge step for him. _He’d said they were seeing each other_.

            For Bruce, he might as well have gotten on one knee and proposed. Clark wasn’t likely to be forgetting that anytime soon.

            “Well…” Bruce started, sighing softly, gripping Clark’s hand hard, “What did you think?”

            “They’re lovely.”

            Bruce lifted a brow, “Lovely?”

            “Yes,” Clark smiled, tugging up their joined hands to kiss Bruce’s knuckles, “They are. And I had a good time. Thank you for inviting me.”

            “I uh—” Bruce’s eyes were stuck on their hands, stuck on Clark’s mouth which was still brushing over his knuckles, “I’m glad. They seemed to like you too.”

            “Dick isn’t sure of me.”

            “Dick has been with me the longest. He’s protective.”

            “He’s a cop.”

            Bruce snorted, “Suspicious by nature. He’ll come around more. Given time. And you got Damian’s number.”

            Clark felt something warm ball in his chest. “Yeah. Is he—”

            “He’s different.”

            “Different how?”

            Bruce looked at the table, “He’s got Asperger’s. And a couple other relating diagnoses. But he’s very functional and incredibly smart.”                  

            “I could see that. He’s—honestly, Bruce, he’s adorable. I like how his mind works.”

            “You do?” Bruce blinked, his throat working, “Damian usually puts people off because he’s so different. And abrasive.”

            “I like him.”                

            “Clark—that means a lot to me.”

            Clark smiled, feeling all sorts of gooey and turned on, “ _You_ mean a lot to me.”

            Bruce’s eyes had gone soft. Like they sometimes did in the bedroom. Like they did when Clark said things he probably couldn’t get away with outside their bed. And Clark wanted desperately to say more. He wanted to kiss Bruce, head to toe. To make love to Bruce under his own roof. To seal this night with something physically solid.

            “Would you—would you—” Bruce sucked in a breath, “Fuck, Clark. I’ve never done this with anyone. I’ve never—”

            “It’s alright Bruce. We don’t have to.”

            “I want to. And it—it fucking scares me.”

            “Why?” Clark whispered. He’d moved at some point and was close now. He could feel Bruce’s breath on his cheeks, the soft pant of it feathery and frightened. It made Clark want to lean forward and clutch Bruce to him. Make sure Bruce knew that he was safe. That whatever they were building between the two of them wasn’t a bad thing. It wasn’t dangerous. It was good.

            “I don’t trust easily.”

            “That’s not a surprise,” Clark smiled, giving in to pressing a kiss to Bruce’s forehead, his temple, trailing his lips down Bruce’ cheek to just beneath his jaw. Bruce stuttered out a choked breath, gripping onto Clark’s shoulders like he needed the support not to fall over.

            “I’m serious.”

            “So am I. I already knew this about you. And it’s okay that you don’t trust easily. I get it. You’ve been hurt before.”

            “I never said that,” Bruce’s voice came out in a breathy growl. Clearly trying to be upset with Clark, but unable to be.

            “You didn’t have to. It’s written all over you. Along with all those ‘fuck off’ signs you wear.”

            “Clark—”

            “Yes?”

            “Would you—would you stay over?”

            “Mmmm,” Clark pulled back and smiled, “I was really, really hoping you’d ask me that.”

            “Yeah?” Bruce swallowed.

            “Yeah.”

 

 

            They made love how Clark hoped they would. Maybe it was the softness of the moonlight drifting into the bedroom to light their movements with. Maybe it was that Clark was a hopeless romantic and having Bruce quite literally melt for him, made him very, very soft at heart. Clark didn’t really care.

            The night had been perfect. Perfect, in that it was normal. Perfect, in that Clark enjoyed every nuance. Every little hiccup. Every little snag when clothing got stuck or when Bruce snorted during a laugh and then looked humiliated.

            Clark liked normal. He liked callouses, and freckles, and scars. He liked the imperfections in Bruce that made him who he was.

            “I’m ticklish,” Bruce murmured, voice silky and drugged beneath Clark’s ear. Clark was half-asleep already, but he wanted to finish mapping all the scars on Bruce. He was tracing one that looped a hipbone and curled wickedly up to kiss the bottom of a rib.

            “What did this?”

            “Barbed wire.”

            “It looks like it fileted you.”

            Bruce cracked open one eye, “It did.”

            “Ouch,” Clark whispered, pressing his lips to the curve of it, very tempted to lick the skin and see just how ticklish Bruce really was. He already knew how good Bruce tasted.

            “How many do you suppose you have?”      

            Bruce sighed, “A lot…does it matter?”          

            “No,” Clark kissed another. It looked like a bullet wound. And it looked old. Something about knowing the silver pock-mark flesh meant Bruce had been hurt, perhaps even close to death, had his stomach balling in fear. “It’s—fine.”

            “I’ve been a cop for a long time, Clark.”

            “I know.”

            “Haven’t you been hurt on the job before?”

            “A couple times, yes. Never—” Clark swallowed thickly, shifting a little when Bruce’s hand found his hair and started petting, “Never with so much damage.”

            “Gotham is a dangerous place.”

            “Clearly.”

            “Clark—”

            “I know,” Clark whispered, then he started back on his mission of counting and kissing and cataloging and Bruce fell quiet. The air felt damp on their skin but intoxicating. The scent of whatever was blooming in the gardens just outside Bruce’s bedroom window was like perfume and it made him greedy. Made him want to steal more. Take more. Use more. Bruce’s skin was heated silk under his palms and his body pliant. He’d give more if Clark wanted it. Clark already knew that.

            It made it better. What they had between them was so easy in these quiet moments. So good. There wasn’t any push or pull of power. And no arguments, certainly. Just ease. And God, exquisite trust. All the things that Clark knew were hard for Bruce.

            “Clark?” Bruce murmured, eyes glowing abalone as he peered down at Clark. Clark had moved to kneel between Bruce’s legs and was kissing Bruce’s belly button, holding those narrow hips down with ease. Bruce wouldn’t fight him and there was a little thrill in Clark knowing that no one else could be trusted like that. No one else was allowed to handle Bruce this way.     

            “Can I?” Clark whispered, “I’m—I want more.”

            Bruce swallowed, the breeze ruffled over them and whispered secrets. Whispered of the horrors just outside their four walls. Clark wanted to delay reality from coming in. He wanted to make this moment last.

            “Yes. You can.”

            So, Clark did.

 

 

 

            Wayne had been on the JD Killer case for close to eighteen months. He was almost certain they didn’t have all the bodies that the man had disposed of.

            The early ones when he was honing his craft. But he was certain, that if they found the first victim, they would find out who their killer was. Because that kill would be the most personal to their guy. It would have meant the most to him. And there was a strong possibility the first victim was a relative or close friend of his.

            Of course, the killer was always morphing. But there were certain things he wasn’t likely to change. The man wouldn’t remove his need for sexual sadism. He needed it to get off and feel something in the kill. He wouldn’t stop strangling the victims either. Strangulation allowed him to have a greater degree of intimacy with the victim—allowed him to _become_ the victim more easily for those few breathless minutes as the life drained out of them.

            The JD Killer hadn’t struck again. Not yet. His newer timeline, of once every two weeks, would mean a body should turn up again within a couple of days.

            Wayne dreaded the phone call.

            He sat at his desk, or in their sloppy war room with the whiteboard, drawing out ideas. They canvassed neighborhoods again. Brought in old possible witnesses and worked on getting into juvie records under the specific subset of sexually related crimes. Wayne had a couple favors he could call in with Judge Faust. But he wasn’t sure if that would be enough.

            Nobody liked to fuck with juvie records.

            But _their guy_ was in there. Wayne knew it. He could fucking feel it.

            The guy would have had a juvie record. He probably did all the hallmarks before graduating to killing people. He likely killed small animals or tortured them as a child. He probably got caught peeping in on other young boys or staring too much in the locker rooms.

            When Wayne closed his eyes at night, he saw a killer with gaunt features. Green hair. Sharp cheekbones and dark eyes. Pale. Malnourished and sickly, maybe. Poor hygiene.

            Clark’s theory of the man hiding in a basement somewhere with a laptop checked out. The fucker was creepy enough, it was certainly possible he didn’t want to accidentally draw attention to himself. But the harmless Uber driver or delivery guy theory checked out too. Anyone who had easy access and wasn’t really looked at. Who could fly under the radar while hunting without anyone really noticing?

            It made Bruce antsy as fuck. And agitated.

            Made him wish he smoked so he could step outside and blow off some steam. Instead, he worked himself into a frenzy of caffeine overload and gave himself a headache from grinding his teeth. By the time Jason called, Bruce was already considering heading home early.

            He’d grabbed a hefty load of open cold-cases with similar circumstances and was going to bring them home to agonize over. Victim zero could be in the stack he brought he home this time.

            “Hey, what’s up Jay?”

            _“My car won’t start. I think it’s a blown header. Can you come to get me?”_

            Bruce frowned, “Seriously?”

            _“I know, I know. Please don’t lecture me. I should have let you buy me a car. But this piece of junk is my baby. And I—I worked hard for it. But something has gone out and I’m stuck at fucking work.”_

            “Go back inside and wait for me. I’ll be there in fifteen,” Bruce glanced down at his watch, “Maybe twenty.”

            _“I could call an Uber actually. I didn’t think of that till now. But it would save you a trip.”_

            There was a small, albeit frightening twinge, that pinched Bruce’s middle and made him grip his phone too tight at that suggestion. “No. Don’t call an Uber. I’ll be there in a minute. I wanted to call it a day anyway.”

            _“Thanks, B. I’m just waiting on the tow truck. I called like an hour ago. I don’t know where the fuck they are?”_

            Bruce laughed, “I can call them again on my way.”

            _“Wait—I see him coming. Stupid douche. I’m over here!”_ Jason’s voice echoed over the line, loud and pissed off, _“Fucking ridiculous. I’ll see you in fifteen, then?”_

            “Yeah, I’ll be there soon.”

            Bruce gathered up the files he wanted to go through at home, found his empty travel mug and his jacket, then left the precinct at exactly 4:37 pm. By the time he got to Jason’s work, it was 5:00 pm on the dot. He’d hit traffic.

            When he pulled into the lot and found Jason’s car missing. He figured the tow truck had already hauled it away to a garage nearby. Jason would be inside int eh security building. Like he’d asked him to be.

            But when he got inside, and the manager said Jay never came back in after clocking out, Bruce’s heart leaped firmly into his throat and he had to take a minute not to panic as he left and went back to his car. _Retrace steps. Evaluate possibilities. Do. Not. Panic._

            5:10 pm. He’d spoken to Jason only thirty-three minutes ago.

            Everything was fine. Jason had gone with the tow man to follow his _baby_ to the shop. He probably forgot to text or call. He was like that sometimes.

            Bruce pushed the call button on his phone. His hands were shaking so badly he could hardly hold the fucking phone. Everything in his body was leaping and fritzing, bouncing with—fear. Strong and fetid, thick as night.

            It rang and rang. Went to voicemail.

            Bruce blew out a shaky breath, then called the next person he immediately thought of.

            The man answered on the second ring. “Clark?”

            _“What’s wrong?”_

“It’s Jay. I can’t—I can’t find him. I think something is wrong,” he squeezed his eyes shut, knowing deep in his gut that something _was_ wrong. He didn’t just think it, he knew it. “Please come to Gotham. I need you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Homicide stats, in the beginning, are real. As are gun-related deaths and estimated serial killers walking about. Freaky, huh?


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dark? Angsty? Might make you cry? Yup, yup, and uh--yup.

_Please come to Gotham. I need you._

It repeated in Clark’s head, like a broken record for a solid hour. He’d had to talk to his chief first, clear his leaving early. Then he’d sped on the interstate and cussed up a storm as he’d hit every traffic snag known to man.

            _Please come to Gotham. I need you._

Bruce never said please. Not outside the bedroom. Not like that. He never sounded scared. He never sounded desperate.

            Not till now.

            Clark hit the gas pedal harder and struggled not to blow up at yet another traffic snag. It was five o’clock traffic. Of course, it was bad. This should not have come as a shock. But it felt like every goddamn thing was going against him. Like everyone knew he was in a hurry and a panic and needed to get to Bruce, right _now._

He got to the address Bruce texted, a _Gotham Security Corp_ , that looked small and clean. Clark estimated about twenty employees max. There were only two points of entrance. Both of which couldn’t be accessed without key-card and thumbprint. For being a small operation, the building was very secure. Which Clark supposed was to their credit. They were showcasing their work and advertising with their very own building. It also meant they probably had excellent security footage and coverage of their parking lot.

            Clark was counting on that.

            He met Bruce in the manager’s office and found him white as a ghost. Bruce’s mouth was in a thin line, his arms folded over his chest, his hair mussed and standing on end. He looked like he’d been stretched too thin and was about to pull apart. It made Clark want to lean over and hold him.

            But now wasn’t the time.

            “What have you got?”

            The manager, a stodgy looking man with salt and pepper hair and a grim face frowned up at him from his post at the desk.

            “Jay called the tow truck company for his car at four-fifteen,” the man fast-forwarded the video feed, showed Jay standing by his car on his cell. It was a clear picture, high resolution. Clark was silently pleased.

            “What’s the company name?”

            “He said it was First-Assured Towing. Five-star rating.”

            “Got it on camera?”

            The man swallowed, clicked a few buttons, then the feed sped ahead, the time stamp clicking along. Jason made another phone call—to Bruce. Then a blue and white tow truck pulled into the lot and he hung up. The truck pulled up so it was blocking most of the view, only showing half of the tail lights of Jason’s Impala. The time between Jason disappearing to talk to the tow man who’d climbed out of the truck, to when the man started hooking up the Camaro was only six minutes. But it was long enough.

            When the truck pulled away, Jason wasn’t there anymore. He’d probably been loaded into the side that was blocked from the camera.

            “Any other angles on this camera?” Clark asked softly, having already memorized the license plate. The man who’d climbed out had been average height. Thinner build. That was all that could be gleaned from the footage. He’d worn a baseball cap to cover his hair and the baggy coveralls left little else.

            “I’m afraid not. Is he—is he going to be alright?”

            “We don’t know.”

            It was a struggle not to see Bruce flinch. Not to hear his sharp intake of breath as the truth slipped out of his mouth. It was second nature not to lie, not to make promises they couldn’t keep.

            But they knew nothing. They knew nothing at all. Nothing concrete. And although as detectives, they frequently made guesses, they dealt in absolutes. In facts.

            “Bruce?” Clark angled himself to block his view of the monitors, “We need to canvass. We need to call the tow company. Find out who they sent. Work backward.”

            “Yes,” Bruce licked his lips, forced his gaze to focus on Clark. He still looked painfully white, his skin almost translucent. Sweat shone lightly on his brow and cheeks.

            “We don’t know anything yet.”

            But Jason was a younger white male. He was near enough to the hunting circle of the JD Killer that the possibility of him being the next victim was not out of the range of possibilities. But it was still unlikely. Jason was a little too young. He was handsome sure, but he would be harder to capture.

            Bruce swallowed, shook himself visibly, “We don’t. You’re right.”

 

 

            Jason woke like he was being dragged through gelatin by meat hooks.

            His body _ached_. His eyes burned. His throat felt like someone had jammed cotton down it and that was no surprise because when he managed to force his gritty eyes open, he realized he was wearing a gag. Handkerchief, old and fraying, little tiny pieces of it tickling the back of his throat, making his eyes water.

            He retched a couple of times without meaning to, clogging up his airways, making him panic for breath, before slowing it down enough to stop the knee-jerk reaction.

            _Breathe, Jay._

            Jason didn’t know how long it took to become fully alert. Or how many minutes he simply lay on his side, panting for breath, struggling just to move a fucking finger, but it felt like hours. His arms were bound behind his back and the sockets of his shoulders felt bruised from being forced awkwardly. Maybe something was wrenched. He didn’t know.

            He couldn’t even remember how he got here.

            Why he was here? Where the fuck was here?

            He tried to assess himself, to see in the grainy lighting of the room he was being held, but everything swam when he thought too hard—when he tried too much. So, he drifted in and out of consciousness. He drifted in and out of reality.

            When he finally managed to claw his way awake for the final time, whatever he’d been drugged with was losing its effects.

            And everything became amplified.

            All of the sudden, Jason was painfully aware of the fact that he was naked. His ankles were bound, and he was bitterly cold. The floor was concrete, and it smelled like cat piss. There were no sounds of traffic or people moving and the gray lighting he’d been using to make out the general size of the room, had dimmed to near nonexistent. It was almost black out.

            Gooseflesh rippled along his arms and legs, spread over his belly and made him shiver harder.

            There was a soft snap in the corner of the room. That one sound derailed the panicked spiral of his thoughts immediately. And centered them around a new fear.

            Whatever had made the sound.

            Jason twitched away from it, arched his back to try and see but he couldn’t bend that way and everything fucking _hurt_. He felt abysmally weak. Instinct demanded that he stay balled up for safety. Protect the soft stuff.

            But another snap over his shoulder made him flinch and he had to fucking see. He wasn’t going to be blind to whatever the hell was back there. So, he craned his neck and found a soft glow of amber light emanating from the corner of the room. If he wasn’t gagged, Jason might have fucking laughed. Or cried.

            He wasn’t really sure which. His emotions were sort of running around in his head screaming like they’d been lit on fire. Which could very possibly be a result of the drugs he was certain he’d been on.

            He’d been high before. But he’d never been quite so disoriented.

            “Hello, hello, hello,” a voice murmured near the amber glow and a third snap filled the room. More amber light mixed with shuffling noises.

            Jason was cold, but he was covered in sweat and it all went to ice almost immediately at the rumble of that voice.

            The voice was—familiar?

            No. Not really but it—

            Jason stiffened, shimmied on the floor to get a better view, then froze stiff when he saw the shape of a man standing beside the glow. He could see now the glowing light was coming from glow sticks. Which should be laughable, but it wasn’t. It made everything about the situation a lot more fucking creepy.

            The man moved a little, sitting? Then sighed softly. What the hell sort of room were they in? “You were easier to catch than I thought. It was sort of like shooting fish in a barrel, actually. What would your dear daddy say?”

            Jason jolted at the mentimention of his 'daddy', bit down on his tongue and tasted coppery blood as it filled his mouth. The voice was rumbling along his nerve endings, reminding him of something, he just couldn’t place it. He knew that voice. Maybe.

            He’d heard it before.

            He’d— _tow truck man_. The guy who’d come to pick up his car. He’d jabbed him in the neck with something and Jason had gone down like a fucking sack of potatoes. No fight necessary. Fucking pathetic.

            Apparently, all those fight classes Bruce had insisted on were for shit.

            “Ah, you remember me,” the voice sounded pleased, “No, no,” he tried soothing as Jason started to squirm more avidly, scrambling awkwardly while bound to get away. “Don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself. And I don’t want to do that yet.”

            The man stood then moved over to Jason’s side with the glow sticks in one hand. It made it really fucking easy to see the perp’s face. And when he got closer, Jason couldn’t help the terrified noise that erupted from his throat. Probably because the fucker was literally wearing someone else’s face over his own.

_This can’t be real. This is a nightmare._

_I’m dreaming._

_Too many horror flicks. Too much caffeine. Too much sugar._

            But the closer the man got, the more obvious by the smell of blood in the air alone, that it was real. It was happening in real time. Everything. His pale skin was smeared with red and the skin-mask he was wearing looked loose and fake.

             It couldn’t be real—it fucking couldn’t.

             But Jason had never felt more animalistic fear in his life. Every hair on his body was standing at attention. Even his toes curled in preparation to run, though he had nowhere to go.

            The man laughed, leaning close, grabbing one of Jason’s shoulders with long thin fingers. His hands were ice cold and felt wet. _Blood. He’s bloody._ Jason struggled harder.

            “Stop,” the man ordered quietly, “Stop fighting. I don’t want to drug you again. I want to savor this. I don’t want it over too quickly—understand?”

            Jason didn’t want to understand.

            His eyes started burning worse and when the man’s hand trailed down his arm, over his bicep and then danced over to Jason’s exposed chest and belly. Jason managed to growl out a sound of distaste hoarsely.

            “Don’t worry. It won’t be for a little bit. I’ve already gone hunting tonight. I’m—” he groaned in a way that could only be described as sexual and dug his fingers into one of Jason’s naked hips. Jason struggled violently but moved absolutely nowhere.

            “I’m satisfied. For now.”

            The threat was implicit. And Jason realized with a bit of shame that he might actually fucking cry. His chest was rising and fall so quickly, his heart throbbing in his ears and in the backs of his eyes, it felt like he might explode.

            In a strange way, Jason hoped he did explode. He’d rather die than be touched like that again.

            “Calm now,” the man crooned, rubbing his thumbs up Jason’s belly, like that could possibly be calming, then down to his hip bones, “Calm. The fun is only just beginning.”

            Jason shook his head, felt something wet track down his cheek and recoiled roughly when the man peering down at him with the skin-mask, caught the tear with reverence. Then licked it off his palm.

            “Mmmm. Just the beginning.”

           

 

 

            Clark got a call from Perry after three hours of canvassing, with no leads. No one saw anything. The man who was supposed to be working that particular truck never came into work. He’d called out sick. The tow truck on camera wasn’t even supposed to be in operation.

            No one knew how it had shown up to a call that had already been canceled.

            And because it was Gotham, and she liked adding insult to injury, the heavens had opened, and the rain was washing the gutters and streets into a mash of wet oily sludge. They had to stop under an awning for Clark to even answer his phone.

            Dripping wet, pushing the hair out of their eyes, Clark had to strain to hear his chief over the speaker. Everything around them was weeping in watercolors.         

            _“We’ve got another body Kent. Get over to 3458 Mayfield Ave and start processing the scene.”_

Clark’s stomach dropped, his throat wanted to close. He managed to sound normal when he answered. “Right. Thanks, we’ll be right there.”

            Bruce wasn’t looking at him. He was looking down at his feet, his jaw working furiously, hands in fists at his sides. He looked godawful.

            “Bruce—”

            “I could hear it, Kent.”

            Clark shook his head, “Okay, we’ve got a body. It’s on the Metropolis side.”

            Bruce said nothing.

            By silent agreement, they took Clark’s car and left Bruce’s in the security lot. They drove through the rain, one of the many bridges that connected the cities and arrived on scene a little over an hour later. And they said nothing. Clark wasn’t even sure that Bruce was breathing.

            Tell-tale blue and red lights made the park they were dispatched to look eerie. Another playground defiled by the JD Killer. The rain had let up to a chattering drizzle and they found the body draped at the end of a slide.

            An offering. A laugh. A tease.

            A joke.

            Clark dropped to his haunches at the shoulder of the body and held his breath while studying the skin. White, slicked with rain, young. But maybe the shoulders were too broad. Maybe the hair on the scalp too long. Though it was dark hair.

            And Clark had only met Jason the one time. He’d seen photos a couple of times. But still. He couldn’t be certain.

            “It’s—” Bruce had stopped at the edge of the wood chip bed and was standing stiffly, his face shadowed. Clark wished to God he could see him. Or better, hold him. Remind him he wasn’t alone. “It’s not him.”

            “I don’t think so,” Clark tipped his head and studied the earlobes of the victim that had been pierced at some point. “Has Jason ever had his ears pierced?”

            Bruce shook his head, “No.” His voice came out strangled, roughened by the emotion running so thick in the air it was choking.

            “It’s not him, Bruce.”

            “I need—” Bruce faltered, took a step back as if to flee, then cleared his throat, “I need a minute.”

            “I’ve got this, take as long as you need.”

            And Clark meant it. Though he knew Bruce would never take more than a handful of measly minutes to catch his breath. To force his thundering pulse back into check. Clark worked the scene alone, with a determination that made him feel rabid. He took note of everything. Anything. He ignored his drenched sneakers and his pruned fingers. The chill that wouldn’t leave his limbs from the wet he’d been stewing in with Bruce for hours.

            When Bruce finally joined him, he’d filled three pages of notes and was ready to canvas nearer the water. The blood would probably be all gone from where the JD Killer had taken the face and committed the rape and murder. But there might be something left. Some little bit that he’d forgotten.

            Regardless, it needed to be done.

            “Better?”

            Bruce nodded, but he still looked pale. He still looked—small. Clark hated that.

            They walked side by side down the concrete steps to the beach and when they were out of sight of the police cruisers and the yellow tape, Clark took Bruce’s hand. Bruce jerked at the contact, looked like he’d rather be doing anything else, but kept his hand in Clark’s. Clark took that as a good sign.

           They poured over the beach, walking for long minutes, searching futilely in the rain.

            When they found the kill site, it was of little consequence. There was a big boulder that had been used like an altar. Blood stained the stone black in the middle and Clark could imagine the terror on the victim’s face, being shoved roughly onto that rock. Being defiled and then strangled.

            His stomach cramped on the images and he willed the vomit to stay down.

            They called CSI down to the beach to be thorough, but everything was probably washed away. Useless. Another fucking dead end.

            When they got back to the park, Bruce had slipped back inside himself and gone somewhere Clark wasn’t allowed. His eyes were vacant, thoughts clearly whirring. He didn’t respond to his name the first couple of times Chief Borden said it.

            “Bruce?”

            Bruce blinked up at Clark then went frighteningly still when he saw Borden standing next to them. Everyone was still on scene and it was a madhouse of activity. The Medical Examiner had only just arrived to take the body in.  

            “We need to talk Wayne.”

            “Right.”

            Clark wanted to butt in. He wanted to know what was being said. Why Chief Borden looked like he was sucking on a sour lemon. But he had to step back and let things happen on their own. He wasn’t GCPD. He was still Metro. And that was all there was.

            Clark waited for Bruce by the car. It only took seven minutes.

            And Bruce said nothing before climbing into the car and slamming the door. Clark didn’t know what to do. They’d finished with the scene. It was getting late and the rain hadn’t let up, but he had the distinct feeling that Bruce didn’t want to be around him. That he wanted Clark to go away.

            But Clark wanted anything but that.

            “What did he want?”

            “Don’t. Talk.”

            “Bruce—”

            “Fucking shut your fucking mouth, Kent. Don’t fucking say another thing or I swear to God I will walk back to Gotham.”

            He’d never heard Bruce sound so angry, so in pain in his life. And they’d had their fair share of moments over the years. But this was different.

            Clark obeyed. He fell silent. He said nothing else. And inside, he felt something break within the walls of his chest.

 

 

 

            Bruce waited till they got to Gotham Security Corp before saying anything to Clark.

            His phone had six unheard voicemails on it. All from home.

            No one knew yet…no one fucking knew anything yet.

            And he had to tell them. He had to go home and tell everyone that he didn’t know where Jason was and that Jason could have been taken by the JD Killer, but he didn’t know that either and now he was being cut out of the loop by the FBI and everything was coming crashing down around him and—

            “Bruce.”

            Bruce blinked, saw the outline of his car in the sheets of rain, stared blankly at Clark, then opened the door to get out. Clark followed him, stopped him at the door, tried to talk to him. He couldn’t hear much past the buzzing in his ears.

            “Bruce—talk to me. Let me help you.”

            “No.”

            “Bruce, damn it, don’t just—”

            “Don’t what?” Bruce hissed, shoving at Clark’s chest hard enough to make the man stumble backward, to make his eyes snap wide and his mouth fall open. “Don’t close off? Freak out? Stop talking? Fuck off, Kent.”

            “Bruce, please.”

            “I don’t want to talk to you, Clark. Go home.”

            “Bruce, you can’t do this alone. You can’t—”

             "This won't be the first time, and it certainly won't be the last. Get out of my way."

             "I can't do that. I can't just walk away. And you aren't superhuman Bruce."

             Bruce reached for his door handle, tried to open his car then remembered he hadn't even unlocked the damn thing. He could barely see past the rain in his eyes, let alone dig around in his sodden pocket and try to peel out the car keys. Desperation made him feel weaker. More cornered. Clark either didn't care how close Bruce was to the edge or he was determined to get himself hurt by standing in the way.

            "You need help. You can't--" Clark swallowed, "You can't do this alone."

            “Yes, yes I fucking can!” Bruce was yelling now, his voice coming out hoarse and on the verge of tears and he didn’t realize he was shaking, hyperventilating actually, on the verge of a panic attack until Clark had to steady him when he swayed. Then Clark was suddenly not standing so far away but was in front of him, against him, arms clamping hard around him like steel.

            “Let me go,” he roared, punching at Clark’s sides, squirming futilely, fighting with every ounce of strength he had left.

             It wasn’t much. His muscles felt weak and he couldn’t get in a good breath and his heart was pounding so loud, everything was underwater and echoey. But he still fought.

            And Clark didn’t let go.

            “Fuck you!” he bellowed, scarcely aware of the pounding rain on his head and face anymore. Gasping big lungfuls of wet air into his chest. “I don’t need you! I don’t need your help!”

            Clark shook his head, weathered the punches and the insults and whispered into his ear over and over, “I’m here, Bruce. I’m here. It’s okay.”

            And the final nail in the proverbial coffin clicked into place. Bruce fucking broke.

            He sagged abruptly into Clark, all the remaining strength in his limbs suddenly gone and he started sobbing. The punching lost its power and turned into desperate fistfuls of coat and Bruce silently prayed Clark could catch all the pieces because he couldn’t keep it together any longer. He just—couldn’t.

            “I don’t need you,” he whispered into Clark’s chest. Clark didn’t let go.

            They got back into Clark’s car and drove straight to the manor. Clark stopped in the kitchen to explain everything to Alfred. Bruce didn’t hear any of it. He couldn’t keep his eyes open, couldn’t make his body function.

            It was like someone had ripped the fucking cord out of his body and left him literally powerless.

            He vaguely remembered getting up the stairs, being undressed and coaxed into a hot shower. Clark’s hands were warm and gentle on him. The soap was cleansing. Familiar. Good.

            When Clark wrapped around him in his bed, pressed kisses to the back of his neck, Bruce had to close his eyes to block more tears. Had to take small sips of air to prevent more cracks in his façade of strength.

            He was weaker than he’d ever been. He was—lower than he’d ever been. And Clark was here to witness it all. _Had_ witnessed it all. _And was still there…_

            “I don’t need you,” he said again, and Clark held him tighter.

            “That doesn’t matter. I’m still here. I’m not leaving.”

            “He has Jason. I know he has him,” Bruce whispered the traitorous words, felt them deep in his chest like knives and closed his eyes against the searing pain. "I can't lose anyone else, Clark. I can't lose him. I've lost before and I just--I can't."

            “We don’t know that he has him.”

            “I know.”

            Clark's breath felt like whispers on his skin. “Then we’ll find him. We’ll catch him.”

            “The FBI has been called in. It’s why Borden came tonight. He wanted me to be the first to know. We’ve been pulled off the case. The task force has been disbanded.”

            Clark nuzzled in tighter, “I thought that might happen. I’m so sorry Bruce.”

            “I can’t—” Bruce choked on the words, “I can’t lose him. I can’t do this.”

            “Yes, you can. I’m here. I won’t leave.”

            Why should something so unimportant, be everything to him? _Mean_  everything to him? Clark's presence shouldn't matter. No one should. Bruce couldn't depend on anyone but himself. He was good at his one-man-operation and always had been. But he'd never felt like this before either. He'd never felt gutted with terror, not knowing where one of his children was or what might be happening to them. It was debilitating. 

            “Clark, what if I lose him? What if he takes Jason from me?” the questions sounded too vulnerable and Bruce wanted to curl in on himself because of it. 

            “I—” Clark’s heart was a tattoo in his shoulder blades, the steady metronome that jumped with the possibility. And Bruce hated that they both knew the reality of life. That sometimes, the good guys didn’t win. And sometimes, good people died. Life wasn’t fair. Bruce tried not to think of pearls and blood and an alleyway that smelled like stale sewer water, but he did. He thought of it all. And the images of his dead parents flickered in his mind in perfect clarity, frozen in death, like horrifying scarlet painted caricatures. “I don’t know, Bruce. I just don’t know.”

            Bruce didn’t fall asleep till dawn. He fought it, terrified of missing a call. Or a page. Or something that might lead to Jason. But even he couldn’t fight sleep forever, and he drifted off just as the sky turned pink.

            And Clark was still there. Clark hadn’t left.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There may not be a new chapter on this one till the weekend as I update a couple of my other fics I've been neglecting. But It won't be long:)

           Jason woke himself from shivering.

            He’d been left alone most of the night. He’d slept in handfuls of blurry minutes, too exhausted to keep his eyes open any longer. When the sun came up, the room he was being held in, looked more like just a room, less like a terrifying torture chamber.

            Skin-mask man left at some point and hadn’t returned.

            Jason managed to get himself pushed up against a wall during the night and was curled into a ball with his spine pressed tight to the drywall. It felt flimsy. Like he could punch a fist through it.

         Mobile home?

          He blinked, felt the scratchy concrete on his cheek then rolled his eyes. No. Not a mobile home. Duh. Had to be something a little more permanent than that to have a concrete foundation.

           An abandoned warehouse or outbuilding in some part of Gotham where no man, save maybe a very desperate homeless one, ever ventured. Someplace he would never be found.

          And that was a useless train of thought. Extremely _not_ helpful.

          Jason tried not to feel the return of the edgy panic from the previous night, and instead focused on getting the gag out of his mouth. The corners of his lips were so chapped, they felt raw and the rag was cutting into the abused skin. If he could drag in a better breath of piss-stained air, he might be able to think more clearly. He might able to plan an escape better.

       Something.

      He worked on the problem for most of the morning and managed to get the gag mostly out of his mouth. He’d lost every ounce of spit in the process and was so thirsty he’d probably whore himself for a drink, but a few hours in, he got the gag off and had it loose beneath his chin. It was still tied around his neck, but he immediately felt relief with some small bit of progress made.

       Plus, he could breathe easier. Which made screaming a hell of a lot easier too.

       Something he immediately did once he saw skin-mask man saunter back into the room with a small bag tossed over his shoulder. Unfortunately, the man didn’t appear to be fazed in the least by the volume with which Jason could scream and he merely chuckled like it was a party trick before kicking Jason in the stomach hard enough to make him vomit.

       Despite having an empty stomach, a surprising amount of fluid managed to make it up his throat. And skin-mask man laughed the whole time he was upchucking.

       When he was finished, he patted Jason on the shoulder, then sat cross-legged on the floor to go through the bag he’d brought. Jason did his best not stare at the loosely hanging face over his own, or the dried blood on the collar of the guy’s shirt, but it was a struggle. As was not feeling sick again by the smell of his own vomit inches from his face.

      “You’re looking chipper and you got the gag off. Good job. Sleep well?”

      “Fuck you.”

       “Ah, mouth like your father. I like that,” he blinked owlishly down at Jason, ruffled his hair, then pawed through his bag, “Wanna see what I brought? I’ll just bet you’re dying of thirst. Am I right?”

        Despite himself, Jason’s mouth watered, and he was forced to swallow thickly when skin-mask man procured a bottle of fresh water and stuffed it under his nose.

       “What would you do for water?”

         Jason glared.

        “Thought so. How about, a game of truth then? I ask you things, you tell the truth and you get a little bit of water. And if you lie,” he cocked his head and the skin mask slipped a little showing off ghostly pale skin on his forehead. Jason’s arms and legs flushed with goosebumps, “then I hurt you. Which will be so much fun for me.”

         “Why are you doing this?”

         He shrugged both shoulders, “I ask the questions, remember little bird? Me. Not. You.”

         “I—”

        The slap came out of nowhere. One minute, skin-mask man was sitting down, looking fucking Zen despite the freakish face, the next, he’d hauled Jason up by his hair and hit him hard enough across the face to rattle teeth. His grip was brutal and Jason winced, grinding his teeth to not make a sound.

        “Oh, oh, oh, oh, mmmm,” skin-mask man hummed, “I like that. I like that face. I’m going to enjoy this. But I think, I’m going to enjoy wearing your face more. It’s such a pretty face. So pretty.”

         Jason’s vision swam a little, “Fuck you.”

        “No,” he grinned, and Jason could see his teeth were yellow beneath the ripped-up mouth, “fuck you. Eventually. But I like to draw it out. I like to—make it count. And I want to see you squirm. And I want to watch you come apart. At the seams, like a doll. Then, when I’m inside you, I end you. I wrap my hands,” he paused, eyes flickering hawkishly down to Jason’s neck, then his long fingers followed his eyes and gently wrapped around his throat.

         Jason went very, very still.

         “I squeeze slow at first. Then I squeeze harder,” the pressure increased minutely, then grew by the second until Jason’s face went purple and he couldn’t get in a breath and panic clawed at his chest and stomach, “and harder until—pop!”

          Jason jerked, and the man loosened his grip, letting Jason drag in mouthfuls of dirty air as quickly as he could get them in. He coughed hard enough he almost didn’t hear the man keep speaking in that low, rushed way, like he wasn’t really expecting anyone to listen. Manic and edgy.

          “Pop goes the weasel, right? That game was always a killjoy. But it got the point across didn’t it? I liked it. But I’m distracted again, aren’t I? Pop, and you die. But not yet. Not until I’m ready and I’ve got you ready. I want you ready. Ready, ready.”

           Jason shook his head, unable to look away, “I won’t ever be—ready. Nobody is fucking ready to die like that.”

           The man shivered a little, “Everyone is. Everyone. I can show you. I can show you everything. I can make you—see the lighter side of things. My side. I can make you see.”

           “Don’t want to—”

            Jason’s words were cut off, his mouth covered by one of those freakishly narrow hands, “Shhhh. I can show you. I’ll show you. I’ll make you understand. I’ll make everyone understand.”

 

 

            Clark didn’t wake Bruce when he got up.

            He went down to the kitchen, made coffee, ignored the eerie calm in the house that felt unnatural and went back upstairs with two cups of coffee and some toast. He hoped Bruce would humor him and eat something. Anything.

            When he got back, Bruce was already awake and sitting up. His eyes had dark smudges beneath them like bruises and his skin looked sallow.

            “Coffee?” he croaked, reached feebly for the other cup Clark had brought up. Clark immediately gave it and sat back to watch as Bruce downed the whole thing, not even stopping to savor or not scald his throat. The man was a beast.

            Coffee inhaled, he moved to his closet, tugged out clean clothes and started getting dressed. Clark silently found his own bag, shaved, brushed his teeth, then joined Bruce again. Bruce had stopped like he’d been glued to the carpeting by the bedroom door, one hand holding his phone the other fisted at his side. He was wearing what Clark liked to affectionately think of as his police clothes.

            Dark Henley, dark jeans, black Nikes. Even his gun was already holstered and clipped to his belt beside a pair of cuffs that peaked silver out of the dark colors.

            “What is it?”

            “Another letter.”

            “I thought we’d been pulled off the case.”

            “Yes,” Bruce blinked up from his phone, then scowled, “But I’ve been at the department for a long time and I’ve made friends. I’ve got favors I can call in.”

            “And you’ve called them in.”

            He nodded, “ME report should be in within a few hours.”

            Clark lifted a brow, “That’s fast. They must be working all night.”

            “They are. They brought in their own ME, profilers, investigators. The works. And they’re going to find the JD Killer,” he shrugged a shoulder, eyes going sharp and lethal, “Just not fucking fast enough for me.”

            “How are you going to stay in the loop? You can’t have a contact in the FBI too.”

            Bruce stilled.

            “Jesus, Bruce. You could get in serious trouble for messing around in this when you’ve been pulled. You could get suspended or fired.”

            “He’s my son,” Bruce growled, baring his teeth, “My _job_ means nothing without him. Nothing.”

            “I’m sorry,” Clark looked down at the floor, shook his head as shame rushed up his throat, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

            “No one is keeping you here. No one is making you stay. I said I didn’t fucking need you last night, and I meant it. You can go home with your tail tucked between your legs at any time.”

            Clark bit his tongue, nodded, “You’re right. I could. But I’m not going to. I’m with you. I said I was, and I meant it.”

            “Fine.”

            “What’s next?”

            “Borden gave me a few days leave. I told him about Jason and that he’s missing. In ten hours, I can officially report him to Missing Persons and start an official case. Until then, we’re going to a coffee shop downtown to meet up with a CI I’m friendly with. She’s going to be bringing me a copy of that letter.”

            “Does GNN already have it?”

            Bruce shook his head, “I don’t fucking know, Kent. Let’s get a move on.”

            Clark wasn’t offended by the gruffness, he was relieved.

            The drive to the coffee shop was about as quiet as the night before and Clark let the silence between he and Bruce stretch. It wasn’t as painful as the night previous. But the urgency was still there. The tainted scent of fear still lingered and made the car feel chilly.

            Clark knew Bruce had said ‘she’ when he’d mentioned his confidential informant, but for some reason, Clark had pictured someone plain. A small, but a mousy woman, with nondescript features and a soft voice.

            That was nothing like the woman they met at the coffee shop.

            She wore green velvet and long gold earrings. Her hair was jet black and tied into a neatly coiled bun. She dripped wealth and class and looked at Bruce like she wanted to eat him. In every carnal way possible.

            Clark was immediately wary of her. And though he didn’t like to judge on looks alone, he didn’t like her. Not. At. All.

            “Selina,” Bruce said her name gently when she leaned in to kiss his cheek and hugged him around the neck. “It’s good to see you. It’s been awhile.”

            “Yes,” she smiled, green eyes dancing with mirth before slipping away from Bruce and finding Clark. Her brows lifted, but she didn’t bother asking who the hell he was, or what he was doing with Bruce. She was too busy sizing him up for her next meal. “It definitely has.”

            “I’m not here on a social call.”

            “Oh?” she tipped her head, eyes dancing to Clark again and this time Clark glared. He really did not like this woman. “That’s a shame.”   

            “You already knew this wasn’t social. Stop fucking with Kent.”

            She smirked, “Sorry. Old habits die hard. He’s so mad, it’s adorable.”

            Clark opened his mouth to argue, but Bruce’s hand on his leg beneath the table gripped him hard enough to bruise. He snapped his mouth shut and ground his teeth instead.

            “I need the letter.”

            “I brought a copy. I said I would, sweetheart. I didn’t lie.”

            “I need it. No games.”

            She hesitated, “You’ve got it awfully bad for this killer, Bruce. It could make a woman jealous. It seems—personal.”

            “It is.”

            Selina reached into her purse, drew out a manila envelope and sighed, “You gonna tell me why?”

            “No.”

            “You don’t need to,” she bit her lip, shaking her head, “You only ever get like this when it’s family. Here,” she offered the envelope and looked suddenly exhausted. Suddenly not so pretty and refined. The glamor must have worn off on her witchy spell.

            “Thanks.”

            “I’ll do my best to keep feeding you what I can. But you know I won’t risk getting caught for you.”

            “I know. And I’m grateful. For anything,” Bruce added, his eyes already locked on the envelope.

            They exchanged another foolish Europeans-style kiss and Selina’s red lipstick smudged on Bruce’s cheek. Clark _might_ have felt a bit of unwarranted rage at the sight. He might have also immediately removed the smudge the minute they got in the car.

            Bruce raised a brow at him and Clark could only shrug in response.

            He wasn’t going to apologize for not liking Selina or that she’d obviously had designs on Bruce for quite some time. They’d probably slept together in the past. Clark really hoped not. But it was possible. He and Bruce had never talked about that aspect of their lives. Of who had been _before_ now.

            And the time for that certainly wasn’t now. But it was tempting to make now a good time. Just so Clark might feel better about it.

            Bruce started opening the envelope, stopped, then turned to face Clark with a strange expression on his face, “We’ve never slept together.”

            “I’m sorry?” Clark frowned.

            “Me and Selina. We’ve never slept together.”

            Apparently, he’d been broadcasting his thoughts a hell of a lot louder than he should have been. Even though it was really very nice to hear Bruce clear that up.

            “OK.”

            Bruce swallowed, looked down at his lap, at the envelope, “I’ve never been interested in women. I’m not bi. I’m gay. And she knows that. She just likes to play, and you make an easy target.”

            “Oh.”  

            Apparently, they were having this conversation then. Right now.

            “I’m bi.”

            Bruce blinked at him, “Okay.”

            “Does that bother you?”

            “No.”

            “Right,” Clark could feel his face getting hot and he wasn’t sure why. It didn’t make a lot of sense why he was embarrassed talking about this. He’d had sex with the man beside him enough times it shouldn’t be awkward. But it was. A little. “I uh—” Clark swallowed, “I should tell you I’ve only been with a few other people before you. Couple women, a handful of men. I do tend to prefer men, though I’m attracted to both. Nothing too serious.”

            Bruce was staring at him again, his eyes so gray they matched the sky and Clark almost broke the space between them, so he could kiss him. So, he could wipe that look off the other man’s face. Because it looked an awful lot like insecurity.

            “I’ve only been with one other person.”

            Clark’s face did something that wasn’t good. Probably because he was so surprised, but then Bruce was blushing, going so red it stained the tops of his ears and he felt like shit. Worse than shit. One did not look aghast when their lover claimed a pretty hefty lack of experience in confidence.  

            “That’s not a bad thing.”

            “It was casual—friends with benefits. I haven’t done anything—since. Not till you. It’s never been a priority in my life. I’ve always been too busy.”

            “That’s okay. I like—” Clark shifted in the seat, heard the leather groan and felt his own face going red, “I like that. I like it a lot actually. It’s nice.”

            “And it doesn’t bother you that I’m not as experienced?”

            Clark blinked, “Bruce, I mean, seriously. That’s hot, first of all. But second of all, I never would have guessed. You’re very—” he started laughing and Bruce scowled, “Very amorous in the bedroom.”

            “Right, well,” Bruce cleared his throat, “Let’s never talk about this again. And get back to work.”

            “Of course.”

            It took a great deal of effort to switch from talking about past-sexual experiences to the crazed writings of a madman but knowing that Jason was missing, and the clock was ticking, helped. It helped a great deal.

            The letter from the JD Killer was much like the first.

            Blocky and spaced awkwardly. Frantic.

            But this time—the last line of the letter was addressed to Bruce specifically. There was no other way to decipher it.

 

            **_I’ve taken a prince. He won’t be the last, but I might be his first._**

**_Now all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, will you be able to put him together again?_ **

**_Come and play with me, detective. Come and laugh with me._ **

 

            “He’s not being very safe, is he?”

            The copied letter in Bruce’s hands crumpled, his arms shaking as he had to clearly reign in a wave of rage that Clark well understood. The man was playing a game, sending letters like a child as if this was a party trick. As if life wasn’t in the balance.

            “He wants me to catch him.”

            “Before he—”

            “No. After. He wants me to find Jason’s body. To see what he’s done to him. But eventually, he wants me to catch him. Me, specifically.”

            Clark looked out the windshield and wondered how the killer had come into contact with Bruce. Had it been after Bruce had been assigned the case? Or before? Did the killer know Bruce and the family personally?

            “Do you think you’ve met him before?”

            “No,” Bruce carefully put the letter back into the envelope and closed it. “No, I don’t think so. He’s a natural voyeur and prefers keeping that layer of distance away from people. He’s probably been watching me for months. Likely after I was assigned his cases.”

            “So, he’s been keeping close tabs on the investigation.”

            “Yes. Very close.”

            “Could someone be feeding him information from the inside?”

            Bruce considered this for a moment, then shook his head, “It’s doubtful. He’ll have read my name in connection with the murders in a news article and became naturally curious. When he saw my face, he might have dug deeper. He might have found Jason’s picture and grew infatuated.”

            “Bruce—couldn’t Jason just be—a means to an end for the killer? Doesn’t it seem like you are his real target? The infatuation is with you? To be honest, you fit the profile for his intended victims better than Jason does. Dark hair, white, in your thirties,” Clark swallowed around a lump in his throat, “Attractive.”

            Bruce blinked, “Yes. It’s possible.”

            “He wants you more. You’re his golden kill. The one he’s decided is going to make it all better.”

            “The one who’s going to help him discover who he is,” Bruce said darkly, looking down at his lap, “We have two more hours until I can report Jason missing officially.”

            Clark nodded, “Back to the manor? Or somewhere else?”

            Bruce inhaled softly, running both hands over his face. He looked so exhausted, Clark desperately wished he could do something—anything to make this better. “Home. Let’s go home.”

            Clark’s stomach dipped at the word choice, the casual way Bruce said it like there wasn’t a million possible implications. The ride back to the manor was quiet. Bruce kept his phone in his hand, the volume cranked up on the ringer. They didn’t listen to music or talk to fill the space. By the time they got back, the rain had picked back up from the day previous and even though it was hardly afternoon, it looked dark out. Everything painted in gothic tones. It made the manor look like it was starring in a horror film.

            All they needed was lightning and some well-timed thunder.

            “You can go home Clark,” Bruce murmured when they got inside and peeled out of their coats in the entryway. Alfred was absent, and the house was silent. Everyone was at school. It was unnerving.

            “I already asked for a few days off. It’s fine.”

            Bruce easily accepted Clark’s answer and said nothing against. He supposed it was a sign of how far they’d come. That is was a sign of how much Bruce actually wanted him present, though he’d claimed over and over, Clark was not needed.

            Clark followed Bruce into his office, where he’d first been introduced to Damian and the inner workings of Bruce’s mind and found everything unchanged. Work was left open as if simply paused, and Bruce went straight to his desk where stacks of files were organized into three categories.

            “These are all cold cases that have similar markers to our victims. I need to narrow them down. Discard the ones that aren’t as likely to be involved.”

            “You’re looking for the first victim.”

            Bruce looked up, his eyes slightly unfocused and mouth turned down, “Yes, I’m looking.”

            “Then, I’ll help. Give me a stack,” Bruce offered him the one in the middle, then took a seat at the desk while Clark took over a wingback chair by the coffee table.

            He spread out like he did at home and immersed himself in the files. Gotham PD had similar paperwork to Metropolis and it made going over the reports more natural. He started picking through locale first, making sure to check body drops to be within the vicinity of the Gotham River. Once he’d eliminated any that was too far, he made sure those bodies were also within the JD Killer’s hunting grounds.

            The rest was about finding the morphology in crime scenes. Had the killer always removed any identifying aspects of the bodies? Or had he started with just fingerprints and moved to faces and teeth? It was difficult to say.

            But Clark tried to keep any files with similar enough body defilement in the running. Strangulation was as key as was the sexual aspect. He only kept cases that had both violations.

            In the end, he narrowed down his stack to three bodies. All still unidentified. One as old as four years ago.

            He looked more closely at that file and started pouring over the crime scene photos, hoping for something to strike him as familiar.

            “Clark,” Bruce’s voice brought him out of his thoughts sluggishly and he blinked up with gritty eyes to see it had gotten quite dark in the office. Bruce had flipped on a desk lamp and was perched over open case files with a pair of readers on his nose. He looked adorable. There as an errant part of Clark that wished this was a different time, where he could bend Bruce over that desk and have a little fun.

“I might have something.”     

            Clark rubbed his eyes, “I might too. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

            Bruce smirked, pulling off the readers with a sigh, “Come here.”

            They huddled over the desk, cramming shoulder to shoulder to read and argue and point out differences or possibilities that were too far-fetched. It was the tedious aspect of detective work that could make the brain melt clean out of a man’s head after too many hours.

            “We’ve never established how long he’s keeping the victims before he dumps them.”

            “It’s been too varied. There never seemed to be a pattern.”

            “He’s a serial killer,” Bruce argued, waving a hand, “It’s all about patterns. We just haven’t seen it yet.”

            “Alright,” Clark stabbed a finger at the file closest to him, one of Bruce’s picks, “This one. The body wasn’t found for a week. Decomp made it nearly impossible to target time of death. And since we have no ID still on the victim, it’s also almost impossible to say when the victim went missing, versus when the body showed up. He could be stashing victims for weeks and we wouldn’t know.”

            “Henry Hughes was missing for two weeks before his body showed up.”

            Clark frowned, “So, we can confidently say he’s playing with them first.”

            “Yes.”

            “Bruce—that’s—that might be a good thing. It could mean he won’t immediately—”

            Bruce closed his eyes and sagged a little into Clark’s shoulder. “I know. It’s a good thing. It means Jason is probably still alive. And will be for a little while longer.”

            “You can’t think about the rest right now. You need to focus on just finding him. The rest will be later.”

            “As a father,” Bruce’s voice had gone brittle and watery, “I can’t do that. I can’t just shut off my knowing what is probably happening to him. Right now, while we’re sitting going over the information I’ve looked at hundreds of times before, Jay is being hurt. Jay is probably scared. Jay is—is—”

            “Bruce,” Clark turned, grabbed onto the other man and held him fiercely to his chest, “Don’t. You’ll drive yourself mad. You can’t think like that right now. Please. You have to try not to.”

            “He’s only eighteen. He’s just a boy.”

            “I know.”

            It was a horrific thought. An ugly one. And Clark was having a hard time managing his own frightened chaotic thoughts on the matter and he wasn’t even the boy’s father. He couldn’t imagine the amount of fear that was rushing through Bruce. It was amazing the man was even keeping it together as well as he had.

            “We need to file a Missing Person’s Report,” Clark said after long minutes of simply holding him, running a hand over his hair, gripping the nape of his neck. Bruce didn’t appear to be in any hurry to move. And it was nice to breathe him in, to ground himself on Bruce’s warmth.

            “Yes. Yes, we do.”

            It took only thirty minutes. Bruce filed the report, emailed the latest photograph of Jason along with a BOLO for the Camaro that had been towed. Chief Borden assured him that they would be doing everything in their power to get Jason back safely and that the FBI was informed of the latest development in the case. Bruce pointed them to Jason’s work, the video feeds they had already watched and was told to ‘sit tight’. Terrible advice. But no one knew what to say. No one knew how to be helpful.

            By five o’ clock, Alfred got home with Damian and since they’d opted not to tell the five-year-old that anything was amiss, Bruce did a valiant job of putting on a show. He smiled. He talked about the kid’s day and said all the right things. He played dad well. It suited him.

            And Clark ached for Bruce.

            When Tim and Dick strolled into the dining room, drenched from the rain, and looking anxious as hell, the façade cracked, and Bruce paled like he’d been struck in the chest.

            “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Is something wrong?”         

            “No,” Dick grabbed Bruce’s shoulder, glancing at Damian who was watching all the grown-ups with a serious expression on his mouth. “No, it’s fine. But we have an idea.”

            “An idea?” Clark asked softly, careful to sound neutral.

            Tim nodded, pushing his dripping hair off his forehead. “B, Jay loved his car. It was his baby. It might have been a piece of crap, but he had LoJack on it .”

            “What?” Bruce blinked, looking bewildered for a moment as Tim’s sentence computed, “He—he had GPS put on it?”

            Tim nodded, eyes brightening with a hope that made the ache beneath Clark’s breastbone even more pronounced. God, he hoped it wasn’t misplaced. “Yeah. He told me he put it on it after he bought the thing. You can track it. You can find—” he looked at Damian, “You can find his car.”

             

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I'm not pouring myself into fanfic, I write romance novels! Check out Dayton's Island on Amazon for sale in both paperback and digital formats. Or, look me up on my website to see the latest projects I've got going on at www.fillysaltz.wixsite.com/author
> 
> Hugs!  
> Felicia Saltzman


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got the last two chapters outlined and prepped. I've marked this fic as having twelve chapters in total, HOWEVER, there is a possibility that it might be longer if the chapters end up being bigger than expected. The outpouring of comments and interest on this fic has been staggering and awesome. I've had so much fun! I am considering writing another police AU with these two, just because I don't know if I'll have it all out of my system by the end. We will see! 
> 
> I apologize for the delays in getting this chapter uploaded. I've been hella busy and I wanted to get it right. So, I hope you guys enjoy it! :p

           The gas pedal was nearly flat to the floor on the interstate and still, it didn’t feel fast enough.

           It didn’t feel like Bruce could stop the frantic itching beneath his skin that made him want to claw himself raw. Fear was like an infection, like a toxin in the blood, and it grew stronger the longer it incubated. It festered and destroyed.

            He’d been in high-stakes positions before.

            Bruce had been a beat cop in Gotham for enough years to have encountered adrenaline-fueled scenes. He’d faced off with a perp firing wildly into a crowd, stared down death more times than he’d cared to admit, and had been wounded in the line of duty like he was trying to win a prize for the most amount of bloodshed on a job. But that sort of stress, those sort of life or death situations, were nothing in comparison to now.

            Now, was personal, to a blinding degree. Now, was raw and unfiltered.  

            His muscles were so taut, so poised for action, that they were cramping around the bones, adding to the dull thrum of unease that had clamped about Bruce’s middle and hadn’t let up. He could barely think straight, let alone work a case. But that didn’t stop him from barreling down the interstate after this lead.

            Timothy had been correct about Jason putting LoJack on his old, run-down Impala. The black muscle car was an eyesore, but difficult to disguise. Their killer didn’t know they had a lead and for the first time in months, Bruce felt like they might actually make headway. That they might catch the son-of-a-bitch.

            Maybe.

            The JD Killer would have to be a little short-sided to keep a car within the vicinity of his hideout from a victim. But still—Bruce was hopeful. He was hopeful that even if they didn’t find Jason, even if this led to more clues, it might lead them to _the_ clue that broke the case.

            He’d not called his Chief. He’d not called the GCPD, let alone the MPD.

            Clark had said nothing. He’d climbed into the car, taken his post in the passenger side and had been blessedly silent on the very real rules they were breaking. On everything that could go wrong with this scenario.

            Sure, they were both armed with their back-up weapons. Any good cop worth half their salt always carried a back-up. That didn’t mean they weren’t walking into a potentially dangerous scene where they could be overwhelmed and wounded. Maybe even killed.

            The threat made little difference to Bruce.

            “Two minutes out.”

            Bruce backed off the gas, exited the freeway on Bleeker, then slowed to a crawl as they went deep into the projects. Beneath Gotham, was another layer. An entirely different ecosystem of crime and filth that lived beneath the shiny metal of skyscrapers and wealth. Gotham was a dichotomy. It always had been. There was wealth, art, and class right alongside some of the highest crime rates in the country.

            When people thought of the most dangerous place to live, Gotham inevitably came to mind.

            And the projects, the underbelly, was a prime example as to why.

            It was full dark out, just after nine, but no one was on the sidewalks. No one was walking around getting some ‘fresh’ air. Smog clung to every surface and filmed up the windows to the cruiser, making it difficult to see the turn-off when Clark indicated they’d reached their destination.

            It was the parking lot of a shutdown Coke factory. At some point, about a thousand workers had graced those halls. Now, it stood empty and hollow. A testament to changing times and a struggling economy. The windows were punched out, some boarded up, doors chained.

            Bruce pulled the cruiser into the lot. Parked.

            Then couldn’t move.

            Jason’s Impala was parked ten feet away. It looked untouched physically. It was a struggle to make his legs work, to make his hand open the door handle and force his body forward. He felt a little like he was treading water with weights on his ankles, but after what had to be no more than seconds, they were at the car, staring inside the windows.

            Nothing looked disturbed.

            Jason had some fast food bags in the back. Half-empty Gatorade bottles. A pair of ratty tennis shoes that should have been retired when Bruce told him to retire them. Seeing their frayed laces peeking out from under the front seat, had Bruce backing up.

            Had him closing his eyes and taking long careful breaths to stabilize himself.

            “No sign of a struggle. Goes with the theory that he was probably drugged.”

            “Yes.”

            Clark reached out a hand, tried the door handle, and it easily popped open. “Unlocked. He didn’t care if someone else found it.”

            “The car was a low priority to him.”

            “Why take it then? Why not just take Jason and leave the car?”

            Bruce tipped his head back, swallowing tightly, “Because he probably went through the car and took something. He likes trophies. And he would want more information on his victim. To better hurt him.”

            “There could be trace evidence.”      

            “There could be.”

            “Bruce—”

            “Don’t say it, Clark.”

            “Bruce, please, you know what I’m going to say, and you know it’s right. We need to call in the FBI, let them process the scene, see what can be dug up. You don’t have a forensics lab at home and you might be a detective, but you aren’t a CSI. We need their resources. Waiting isn’t an option. With your contact, we can be fed the information they find as soon as they find it. But we need them.”

            “Fuck,” Bruce hissed, then pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes to help with the ache, “Fuck.”

            “I’m sorry Bruce.”

            “I stupidly thought, that maybe, maybe we’d caught a break.”

            Clark nodded, his brows pinched, “I thought the same. I hoped the same. And that still might be true. You still might get something out of this car. Fibers, mud in the tread, something.”

            “Not fast enough,” Bruce wasn’t feeling rational or hopeful. He was feeling angry and he didn’t want Clark’s cheery shade of optimism at the moment. He wanted to hurt someone. Or something. “At this rate, he’ll be dead before we can find him. And you fucking know that. So, stop trying to make it sound like that’s not what we’re looking at.”

            “I’m not trying to cast this in rosy unrealistic shades, Bruce. I’m just trying to ground you. To be a voice of reason.”

            “I don’t fucking—” Bruce’s voice broke a little and he shifted his gaze to his shoes, “I don’t fucking need you to do that.”

            “Yes, you do.”

            “No, I—”

            Clark cut him off with a harsh kiss, one that immediately stole his breath and took the fight right out of him. He sagged into Clark, a little stunned, a little furious, but also a little thankful that it was Clark-fucking-Kent who was holding him like this. Who knew how to shut him up the fastest and get his mind to stop racing.

            When Clark broke off, Bruce was still clutching at Clark’s jacket to steady himself. The rabbiting of his pulse was still there, drumming in the shells of his ears. But the noise of buzzing bees had settled to a dull roar. Clark frowned down at him, rubbed a thumb over his right brow in an absent manner.

            “I’m calling it in Bruce.”

            “I—yes. Alright.”

            The FBI showed up within the hour. CSI swarmed the parking lot and suddenly the darkened neighborhood of before was a madhouse. Lights and noise and people milling everywhere. Bruce had to walk away.

            He left Clark speaking to a Fed besides the glistening signage of the ME van and found himself aimlessly walking down to the abandoned Coke factory. He stopped at the entrance, which had been boarded and chained up, leaned back into the heavy metal doors and then rummaged around in his pocket for something he rarely, if ever, used.

            He only ever smoked occasionally. It was a habit he’d briefly picked up just after Academy then stopped down to a trickle after Alfred had found out and ripped him a new one. Now, he smoked only for the hairline release it offered. He smoked only when he didn’t have any more fucks to give.

            Bruce pulled out the pack of L&M cigs and tapped one out. He ignored the shake in his hands when he cupped the end and lit it. He drew the smoke in deep and forced himself to stand still. Then he forced his mind to blank and fade, just like the smoke did.

            “I didn’t know you smoked.”

            Bruce had heard Clark coming. He’d known the man would come and find him. But that didn’t stop him from jumping a little at the intrusion. The street lights were a sickly yellow and cast Clark in varying shades of ominous shadows. It made Bruce’s stomach clench and he drew the cigarette back to his lips again.

            “I don’t,” he shrugged, “Not really.”

            “Alfred know?”

            Bruce snorted, “What the fuck do you think? That man keeps track of my cholesterol and blood sugar. You think he’d approve of this?”

            “Not really,” Clark’s teeth flashed white in a smile.

            Silence fell like a wet blanket between the two of them and Bruce didn’t bother to break it. It was strange, being there with Clark. Sharing this oddly fracturing moment where everything felt like it was slipping off a plate into a gaping cavern with no light. A month previous, he would never have thought he’d want Kent anywhere near him during a crisis.

            Now, he couldn’t imagine anyone else.

            He couldn’t imagine _not_ having him.

            “You need some sleep, Bruce. You’re dead on your feet.”

            “Jason isn’t resting. He doesn’t get sleep.”

            “Bruce,” Clark’s hand found him, wove their fingers together, “You can’t find Jason if you aren’t even functioning properly. You’re no good to anyone like this.”

            Bruce shook his head, finishing the cigarette off with a bit of disappointment. They never seemed to last long enough, and he only ever smoked the one. He’d probably not bring out that pack for another month.

            “Fine. I’ll sleep a little.”

            “Good, let’s get you home.”

 

 

***

 

            Everything was cold.

            So cold.

            Jason shivered, teeth clicking together, arms and legs against frigid unfeeling metal. He was stretched out on an autopsy table, body jittering like an addict being dried out. His mouth was dry, so dry every drop of moisture was gone and he couldn’t swallow.

            He could barely rasp out another moan, let alone waste tears.

            “Oh, come on pretty birdy? Done already? I was just starting to have fun.”

            “F-f-f-fuck you.”

            “Not very creative,” skin-mask man sang happily, dragging the tip of his blade down Jason’s belly, digging into his navel. Jason squirmed, keened low in his dry throat and felt vomit claw up to choke him.

            “S-s-s-stop. Stop.”

            Skin-mask had been working him over for hours. So many hours that blurred together into a fucking sludge of pain and humiliation and piss. He’d been writhing like a worm on a hook, blurry and frightened.

            “How much blood do you think you have left in your body, little bird? I think I’ve almost bled you dry. Which is a pity,” he laughed, leaning close, rubbing that loose dead flesh over Jason’s cheeks and nose. Jason retched. “Because I love it when you fight. I love the sass in you.”

            Jason didn’t have the energy to do much more than roll his head to the side. If he could have mustered up a mouthful of blood to spit at his tormentor, he would have. The fucking sicko would have deserved it.

            But his mouth was too dry, and he _ached_ for something to drink. Anything.

            “No, no,” the man cooed at Jason, “Don’t slip off on me. Not yet. I’ve got something that might cheer you up.”

            “I d-d-doubt that,” Jay grated out past his chattering teeth. He sounded pathetic and it made his stomach twist angrily.

            “You’ll like this,” the voice continued, now by his ear, lips brushing the shell as a tongue flickered out to tease. Jason lurched and tried to move, to get away from the unwanted contact but had nowhere to go. He was strapped down, spread eagle like a fucking turkey on Thanksgiving. “Just—give me a moment. Just a moment. I want to savor.”

            Hadn’t they savored this long enough? Jason had had his fill of the kinky bordering on homicidal to last a lifetime, thank you very much. And he’d liked to go home now.

            _Sure, Jay. He’ll just let you go now._

_You are going to fucking die here. After, he actually fucks you._

_Only a matter of time before getting handsy gets boring._

            Jason wasn’t some fresh-eyed, squeaky clean innocent. Before Bruce, he’d had his fair share of childhood trauma and an ugly sob story to make his dreams the stuff of nightmares. He knew what it meant to go hungry or to suffer under the punishing blow of someone a hell of a lot stronger than him. Before Bruce, he’d thought that would be his lot in life.

            But apparently, over the last few years of getting taken care of and being shown that humanity wasn’t as shitty as it first appeared, Jason had gotten soft. He’d gotten so fucking soft that the mere idea of losing his stupid virginity to this freakish clown was almost worse than anything else the guy had done to him.

            Because despite all of the shit Jason had encountered, despite all the abuse he was familiar with, Jason had never been sexually attacked before.

            It was new ground to discover he was pretty fucking frightened of.

            Whatever the prick was planning, he certainly took his precious fucking time doing it.

            There were long minutes where Jay thought he was going to pass out. Long minutes where he wanted to. But then he would hear the rustling of fabric, he’d feel phantom touches again on the inside of his thighs, the bottoms of his vulnerable feet, the sharpness of his hipbones, and the adrenaline would snap him back roughly.      

            Skin-mask’s face appearing at his side once more, jolted a strangled whimper out of Jason that made him flush.

It was surprising to realize he could still blush. He’d been naked for days. Beaten, cut, manhandled. And yeah, he’d already cried. So, it was a little bit of a surprise that he could _still_ fucking blush.

            “Make sure to tell daddy all about how awful it is.”

            “W-w-what?”

            Jason’s eyesight was blurry, so it was hard to make out all the details of Skin-mask man. But he could see the vague outline of something square being shoved into his face.

            He tried to ask again what the hell the freak meant, but then he heard the dull tone of a phone ringing. And it became a lot clearer what Skin-mask had in mind. Jason froze, body going so stiff the shakes he was experiencing died down to vibrations, rather than full-body jerks.

            Then someone picked up on the other end of the phone and Jason couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stop the sound that came out of him when he heard that voice. His reaction was guttural, instinctual, and made Skin-mask cackle with glee.

            Jason started sobbing.

 

 

 

            “Hello?”

            It was two, far too late for a call on his private line, but he’d been awake anyway. Clark was in the kitchen, getting them some coffee, despite trying to tell Bruce to go back to bed. He was alone in the dim quiet of his bedroom, with his phone jammed to his ear listening to static on the other end.

            It shouldn’t have made every nerve ending in his body stand at attention. It shouldn’t have made him hold his breath to listen.

            But something about the number, or maybe the fucking hour, had him hopelessly leaning into the phone, desperate for a response. Desperate for—something.

            “Hello?” he tried again, voice coming out weak from disuse.

            There was something like an inhale on the line, then an inhuman sound of pain. Followed by—sobbing. Whoever was on the other end of this phone call was—sobbing.

            Bruce’s brain short-circuited. His heart fell.

            A fluttery paper heart drenched in crimson, falling to the ground like petals being torn from a rose.  

            If he’d been uncertain as to who could be calling him sobbing at two in the morning, that uncertainty was immediately rectified when Bruce heard the bone-chilling cackle swiftly covering up anything else.

            _“Tell him—”_ the cackling slowed, and the voice sounded gleeful. Bruce’s entire body flushed with goosebumps and his throat slammed closed. _“Tell him how much it hurts. Tell dear daddy. Come on, speak up. He won’t hear you if you don’t speak up.”_

“J-Jay?” Bruce’s mouth felt fat and his lips numb. He couldn’t make his voice rise over a whisper.

            _“B…”_ the sobs were like fire in Bruce’s chest, horrendously painful fire, and he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t get in a good breath at all. _“It—it hurts.”_

_“Good boy. Good pretty little birdy. My birdy. Mine.”_

Red flooded Bruce’s vision, swallowing the panicked grief and trashing his voice when he finally managed to get something else out. “Don’t you fucking touch him!”

            _“Too late detective. I’ve been touching for days. And I like it.”_

            “I’ll kill you. I’ll end you.”

            _“Will you? That sounds almost—delicious. But no. I don’t think that’s how this is going to work. You see, I’m going to play a little more with your baby bird,”_ there was a pained wheeze, bitten off curses and Bruce could only close his eyes to fight off the urge to throw his phone. He was shaking with rage.   _“Then I’m going to kill him. And then—then it will be your turn and I’ll have you and it’ll be like I want. I’ll get what I want. I’ll have it. You see it?”_

The killer’s voice was growing more manic, more scattered as he rushed on, clearly excited by the prospect of killing Jason so he could move on to his prize.

            Bruce had to swallow several times to keep the vomit down.

            “I’ll fucking find you.”

            _“Not to worry. I’ll find you. When I’m finished here.”_

_“B—B please. P-p-please.”_

“Jason, I’m coming. I’m going to find you. I’m going to—”

            _“That’s enough,”_ there was the chilling note of finality in that voice, followed swiftly by the faint melody of bells in the background. Haunting. Bruce stiffened, opening his mouth to utter one more assurance, something else to comfort Jason, then the line went dead.

            For long minutes, Bruce couldn’t move. He sat glued to the mattress, both feet planted on the floor, but he couldn’t feel a damn thing. His body was frozen in shock. Or rage. Or—nothing. He felt, nothing.

            He went over the phone call. He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth until his pulse was mildly less frantic and he didn’t sound like he was hyperventilating anymore.

            Which he very well could still.

            The panic still felt thick and cloying. Violent. Like at any moment it could swarm him and take back over.

            Bruce refused to slip into it. It wouldn’t help Jason, it wouldn’t help him at all. He needed to focus and to—

            He blinked into the murky gray, gripped his thighs until he knew it would leave bruises then murmured, “Bells.”

            “Bruce—your contact just called and you’re not going to believe—Bruce?”

            Bruce didn’t look up. He couldn’t. His mind was clicking away, working, working, working.

            He knew those bells. He knew that sound.

            It was right at the edge of his mind. Something so fucking familiar about them.

            Something. Something there. He just needed to focus a little harder to—

            “Bruce?”

            Clark was kneeling in front of him, grabbing the sides of his face to draw him out of his focus and he wanted to snap at the man. He wanted to cuss him out. Tell him to fucking go away and let him figure out this connection, but he managed none of that. Because blue eyes were studying him with such concern it burned him. And those hands were warm and grounding on his freezing skin. And it felt good. It felt—

            “I know those bells.”

            He sounded drugged. Words slurring. Frightening.

            “What are you talking about Bruce?”

            Bruce blinked at Clark, took a few more breaths to stabilize himself. “He called me.”

            “He called you.”

            “The JD Killer.”

            “What?” Clark hissed, hands tensing on Bruce’s face, eyes widening with shock and then filtering rage that made Bruce want to slump over and into Clark’s arms. Because Clark was big and Clark was strong and Clark could probably make it better. Because he was Clark and the man was amazingly talented at most everything he attempted. “Talk to me, Bruce. Tell me what happened. Stay with me.”

            “He called me. Jason was there. He—he sounded hurt.”

            “I’m—I’m so sorry Bruce. We can try to trace the number.”

            “It’ll be a burner phone,” Bruce shook his head, “but it doesn’t matter. I heard bells on the line. I know them. He fucked up, Clark. He finally fucked up.”

            Clark’s mouth opened, then closed, his brows rising in expectation and Bruce suddenly felt like he could run a fucking marathon. As the shock of hearing Jason sobbing on the other line was fading, his adrenaline was dumping into his veins in heady droves instead. He welcomed the sensation and let it fuel him. Let it take over.

            “Church bells. I know them. My first year as a beat cop, I worked a section of Gotham that was by the wharf. Every day, I heard church bells, the ones I heard on the phone. Every day, I listened to them sing that same fucking song. He fucked up,” Bruce licked his lips, a harsh smile curving his mouth, “We need to go. Right now.”

            “Wait a minute,” Clark held up a hand, “We need a plan. We need to think, not just rush headlong out the door. Your contact called.”

            Bruce’s brows scrunched, “I don’t care. I’ve got a lead and we need to go. Jason is waiting for me.”

            “Diatoms in the mud on Jason’s tires came back to a match for a portion of the Gotham river that has a high content of red clay in the silt.”

            “And?”

            “And if your church is near this riverbed, it backs up the theory that Jay is being held somewhere near there. Which means we need back-up Bruce.”

            “No,” Bruce stepped around Clark, already heading for his sweatshirt and tennis shoes. He was still wearing jeans from earlier and hadn’t bothered to change. “There isn’t time. I’m not waiting for him to fucking gut my kid so I can have the back-up.”

            “Bruce, be rational. Back-up can only help you succeed. You don’t even know which building he’s being held in. We’ve narrowed a location. That’s it. We need warrants, resources. We need the FBI.”

            “What I need, is for you to get out of my fucking way or get in line.”

            “Bruce, they think they know who he is.”

            Bruce stopped in the doorway, his body going ramrod stiff, “What?”

            “The FBI thinks they might know who the JD Killer is.”

            “His name?” Bruce’s voice came out paper-thin. Wary.

            “Two years ago, Blaine Hitchcock was murdered in his apartment. He was sodomized and strangled. Likely raped as well. No fluids were found. Turns out, he was the nurse of a coma-patient who was struggling with amnesia after waking. The two grew close and after a few months, Blaine suddenly went missing. They didn’t find his body for a few weeks.”

            “Name.”

            “Coma patient was a John Doe. Never remembered his name. No family came looking for him either. The patient started calling himself Jack and liked to experiment with hair color.”

            Bruce’s eyes fell closed. “Fits the theory that he doesn’t know who he is. He’s looking for his identity.”

            “He was probably a killer before the coma. But we may never know. I thought you should know. The FBI has been looking into this for months. They might have only just stepped in, but it’s clearly been on their radar for far longer.”

            “How did they—” Bruce shook his head, forcing the frustration out of his head. There wasn’t time for that now. Not while they had the element of surprise on their hands. “It doesn’t matter. I’m glad they found victim zero. But that doesn’t help me. I need to go.”

            “I’m coming with you. But I’m calling in the FBI, Bruce.”

            “Fine. Don’t expect me to wait for backup.”

            Clark’s silence was agreement enough.

            In Bruce’s cruiser, Clark immediately called the contact for the FBI taskforce and then fell silent as they climbed onto the freeway that would take them deep into Gotham’s underbelly. It was a thirty-minute drive to the wharf.

            “What’s the name of the church?”

            “St. Jude’s Roman Catholic Church.”

            Clark’s frown was barely visible. “Patron saint of the lost causes.”

            Bruce refused to believe that saving Jason was a lost cause. He wasn’t about to let that madman win.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've probs missed a few edits. Hopefully, I caught most of them. Otherwise, enjoy! The last chapter is going to be an epilogue with a little time skip so we get to see where all our characters are at down the road. It's been a hell of adventure folks. Thanks for all the comments and love! 
> 
> **I have added the tag, Major Character Death. Do NOT panic. It is not Jason. :p

            The church looked like any other in downtown Gotham.

            Crème stained a dirty brown from mold and moss. Long spires reaching upward toward an unforgiving smog-filled sky and arches that hinted at something greater within. Clark imagined all that stained glass would look ethereal during the daylight.

            At night, it merely looked haunting.

            The faces of Jesus and Mother Mary peered down on them as they crept into the main sanctuary, guns drawn, eyes sharply trained at the altar. They passed empty padded pews, glistening candles that flickered and filled the room with the sweet scent of wax. Everything around them, everything, looked as peaceful and undisturbed as one might expect of a Roman Catholic Church. Clark had never been raised Catholic, but he could appreciate the majesty of the space. The craftsmanship alone was intriguing to look at.

            But nothing about the space looked like a madman was harboring a victim within its glossy ancient folds.

            “He’s not here,” Clark offered, re-holstering his weapon, glancing back at Bruce for confirmation.

            Bruce was still looking around the room, eyes flickering quickly from the organ pipes to the stained glass back to the doors they’d entered. There was a basement in the church. They’d started there first and it was as empty as expected. There were no other rooms to search. Their killer might be nearby, rather than inside the church itself.

            Clark refused to believe this was yet another dead end.

            “He must be nearby,” Bruce murmured, eyes still searching, hands visibly twitching on his gun, “He must be.”

            “There are several warehouses on the wharf. It could be one of them.”

            Bruce frowned, shaking his head, “No. I don’t think so. It would be too far away. I heard the bells so clearly almost as if he was inside the church.”

            “There are no more rooms to search Bruce.”

            Bruce finally looked at Clark, his face pale with dark bruise-like smudges beneath those soft gray eyes. He looked exhausted and Clark very nearly closed the gap between them to hug the man. Even if that sort of contact wouldn’t be welcomed. It would have made Clark feel better.

            “What else is nearby?” Clark spoke softly, keeping his voice pitched low despite it being only the two of them. Maybe it was the hour. Maybe it was the location. Or both. Anything louder felt wrong. The priest had been kind enough already letting them search the premises without a warrant.

            Churches were notoriously a place for the sanctuary. Even if the person seeking it was a killer.

            Bruce frowned, finally dropping his weapon, putting it back into the holster on his belt. “A homeless shelter. Couple Thai food places. And a—” he blinked, looked up at Clark, eyes going dark, “A funeral home. It’s right across the street.”

            “Is it still operational?”

            “Yes.”

            “Bruce, we need a warrant. We can’t just barge in there. It’s the middle of the night—”

            “We don’t have time,” Bruce pushed past Clark, pace picking up into a jog as he reached the sanctuary doors and started down the church steps. The priest who’d let them in before was nowhere to be seen. He’d likely gone back to bed. The hush surrounding them was almost stifling.  

            Outside, Clark had to run to keep up with Bruce, catching him once he’d crossed the street and had gotten to the door. He radioed in their location, that they were checking out the funeral home next door. A garbled reply stating to wait for backup was given in return. He already knew that wasn’t going to happen.

             They’d be there in ten minutes. Ten minutes would feel like hours. And Bruce wasn’t going to wait.

             Clark understood. If it was his son trapped, being tortured, he would have felt the same. Every second was a second too long.

             That didn’t make him feel any less wary.  

             It was a small operation. The funeral home was much like many Clark had seen before. Short, bleached brick, with a tiny sign that claimed it was a Banks and Son’s Funeral Home. It was in a prime location being directly opposite the church. He’d bet almost every parishioner who’d died at St. Jude’s had ended up using their services.  

            The windows were dark. 

            Bruce didn’t seem deterred in the least.

            “Wait—”

            Bruce didn’t even pause. He’d already drawn back his elbow and hit the glass hard enough to shatter it. His hand snaked into the darkness and fiddled with the lock. In less than a minute, Clark was beside Bruce, weapon drawn, and they were searching the funeral home. They had no warrants, not even probable cause, but Clark could feel the foreboding flickers of fear creeping along his spine. That sixth sense of something being terribly wrong was enough to silence any more doubts or concerns.

            The hair on the back of his neck bristled. His arms flooding with gooseflesh.

            The scent of antiseptic and death clung to the rooms, heavily layering everything like a cloying perfume and made Clark nauseous. If the killer was anywhere, it would be here. It had to be.

            They cleared room after room. Two viewing rooms for loved ones to visit the dead. An office dark and locked tight. A break room, storage room, and pantry.

            Then there was the basement, where the crematorium was located. Clark had seen the chimney jutting out the top of the roof. Even though no ashes came fluttering out the top, there was still something distinctly frightening about the fact that that chimney led down to a basement where a body was burned to a crisp. Clark had never been fond of the morgue. A funeral home felt much the same.  

            At the bottom of the stairs, all the plush carpeting on the main floor had been dispensed with and only linoleum polished a bright white remained. It was pitch dark and silent. The sense of something being wrong hadn’t dissipated in the least. It had only gotten worse.

            Clark could hear his heartbeat in his ears, a thunderous noise that made it difficult to focus on the weight of the gun in his hands. It made it hard to keep his attention on Bruce, at his side, creeping down the hallway.

            They’d both brought pocket flashlights and were using them, but it didn’t illuminate much further than six foot out. When they reached a pair of steel doors that looked like the opening to an industrial freezer, the dread in Clark’s chest had reached blinding levels.

            “Bruce,” Clark whispered, “Maybe we should—”

            “No.”

            They should wait for back-up. They should.

            They weren’t going to.

            Clark pressed his lips together, wriggled his shoulders to try and loosen them, then nodded at Bruce when they prepped to enter the room.

            The minute they pushed the doors open, a gunshot rang out.

            Clark didn’t have time to feel much more than a stinging burn at his temple, black dots in his vision, then he crumpled like used tissue paper in the doorway, body blocking the steel door from closing.

            He heard Bruce yell his name. Heard another two shots, saw through the beam of his flashlight lying by his face, a puddle of red pooling slowly, then everything went dark.

 

 

            There hadn’t been time to react. Not nearly enough fucking time.

            One moment, they’d been opening the doors to the crematorium portion of the funeral home and the next, a gunshot shredding the silence and Clark was down. Clark was bleeding from a head wound, lying on the floor, looking—looking like he might not be breathing, and Bruce was fumbling with his flashlight, trying to keep it trained into the murky dark of the prep room.

            _Focus. Don’t panic._

            He fired two shots. Both directly at the shape of the man who’d fired first. He couldn’t tell if he’d hit anything, but if he had, it didn’t seem to be fatal. 

            _Clark was shot. He needed to check Clark—focus._

            The scent of blood and piss was strong enough to make him want to recoil. Strong enough to fill his lungs with the aroma of terror. Jason’s terror. 

            “This—this is not part of the plan. Not part of the plan. Not the plan. Not the plan at all. _Not the plan!_ ”

            Bruce could hear the voice, that familiar frightening voice, jumping around, jerkily repeating words in a hiss of air. And everything was underwater. So far away and yet so close it was like being in a sickening parade with flashing lights and sounds too overwhelming and potent.

            He adjusted his flashlight, re-gripped his Glock in his sweaty palm, then trained the light on the man.

            Like a fucking cockroach being caught under the sun, the man flinched away from the flashlight, his eyes as wild as the green hair sticking up haphazardly all over his head. His skin was pale, so pale all his veins stood out like blue worms. Slicked with sweat, his bones seemed to protrude out of the skin, in a skeletal display of sinew and malnutrition.

            Bruce’s first thought was that the killer looked like one of those creatures that spent all their lives in the dark and had been bleached and blinded by their circumstances. Like they should never leave the dark. Or they might die.

            It was a suiting description.  

           Pressed into the corner of the room, beside a wall in all stainless steel where bodies were obviously stored, he had one hand wrapped around a gun, and the other holding up a naked, battered body.

            It took Bruce all of a millisecond to realize the limp body being held up was Jason.

            And the killer had his gun pressed firmly to the boy’s temple.

            “Put the gun down.”

            Bruce was surprised how calm his voice sounded, how in control he managed to look. He was neither calm nor in control. Clark could be dead at his feet and his son was being held by a madman in the basement of a funeral home. Everything that could go wrong, was going wrong. And would likely go wrong.

            He had no way of ensuring his son came out of this alive. No way at all.

            “I can’t do that,” the killer cackled suddenly, eyes so listless they looked monochrome, “I can’t do that. I can’t. _I can’t do that. He’s mine.”_

            “You don’t want him,” Bruce said carefully, “you want me. Remember?”

            “I don’t want him?” the man pressed the gun harder to Jason’s temple, but Jason didn’t move. He didn’t move at all. There was a terrified part of Bruce that panicked his son was already dead. The amount of blood coating that skin could indicate anything. Anything at all. For all he knew, Bruce was negotiating with the killer for a dead body.

            _Focus Bruce. Don’t panic._

            “No, you don’t want him.”

            “I want you. I want you. I want your face. _Your face. Such a pretty, pretty face.”_

            Bruce swallowed, felt bile rush up his throat, “Yes. You want me. Let the boy go.”

            Those colorless eyes darted back to him, off of Jason. In the beam of the flashlight, Bruce could almost think the man was demonic. Like any moment his pupils would swell and eat every bit of white left. He was looking into the face of pure evil.

            “You want me, that’s right. Put the boy down.”

            The man twitched, the gun pressing harder for a moment, his arms flexing under the weight of Jason’s body. Jason still dangled limply, not even a twitch of movement. Bruce stepped closer, lowering his gun just a hair, just enough to catch the killer’s attention again.

            “Stop,” the man hissed, “No stop. This wasn’t part of the plan. You ruined t _he plan! He’s mine. Mine. Mine. And you—”_ he blinked, like he was seeing Bruce again for the first time and then he dropped Jason abruptly. Jason’s body hit the tile hard, the sound of flesh and bone thudding making Bruce’s stomach jump. But his aim didn’t waiver.

            He could hear sirens in the distance. Growing nearer, creeping closer.

            Not fast enough. Never fucking fast enough.

            “ _Mine_ ,” the killer whispered, eyes glued to Bruce now, gun swiveled to point directly at Bruce’s chest. Good. It was better this way. “You’re supposed to be mine. I need your face. It—It will help me. I need that face.”

            “Put the gun down, or I’ll be forced to shoot you.”

            He was too far gone. Lost in his own fantasy, eyes glazed over, lips peeled back into a manic grin that made fear twist angrily in Bruce’s stomach. He knew he’d have to shoot. He knew he’d—

            Sirens just outside. So close.

            “Stop,” Bruce ordered, voice deadly soft, “Don’t come closer. I will shoot you. Last warning.”

            Bruce had killed people before. He’d killed too many. But this was different. It was—just different and he didn’t know why. He was shaking, shaking like a leaf from head to toe and that wasn’t like him, not at all, but he couldn’t seem to stop it.

            Too many days of caffeine and too little sleep and fear.

            Too much.

            Maybe it was all just too much.

            “Mine,” the killer repeated, stepping nearer, gun still shakily pointed at Bruce, eyes locked on his target. And Bruce knew. He knew the man would never stop. He’d never listen.

            “ _Mine, mine, mine!”_

            Bruce blinked at the man, shook his head, then fired.

            He was well within his rights to do so. A perp was pointing a gun at him, close enough to kill him without even having good aim. Legally, ethically, he was covered. The sharp sound of the report in the closed-in space still jolted him. It still made his ears ring and his head throb. He’d hit center body mass, just beneath the killer’s clavicles.

            If he wasn’t dead already, he would be within minutes. Maybe less. The John Doe Killer would bleed out on the floor of a crematorium, name still unknown, eyes staring glassily up at his own killer.

            A poetic way to end his reign of terror.

            Bruce had to step around the body to get to Jason. He vaguely registered the twitching limbs and blown pupils, then focused his entire attention on Jason. Jason needed him to focus. Stay here. In the present.

            Not in an alleyway with blood and pearls and fear.  

            He pressed shaky fingers to Jason’s neck, felt the weak reply of a pulse and let loose a strangled sob of relief.

            The rest was a blur. He just—blanked out. He couldn’t remember getting to the hospital or riding in the back of the ambulance with Jason, but he knew that he did. He didn’t remember talking to Chief Borden or being offered coffee by the nurse station after someone had mentioned he might be a bit shocky from the trauma. He only had bits and pieces of it. Flickers of a wool blanket, dark coffee, the smell of coppery blood as he’d washed his hands, changed into different clothes, called Alfred.

             When he’d cried like a baby in the hospital bathroom.

             Bruce couldn’t recall ever having lost track of time in his career, ever. Maybe when his parents were murdered. Maybe then. He had huge lapses in memory from that period in his life. Pieces of himself he’d never get back and honestly, had no interest in getting back. Maybe that was why he couldn’t stop shaking, despite no longer being covered in Jason’s blood.

            Clark and Jason had been transported to Gotham General and were both being treated in the ICU. The bullet had grazed Clark’s temple, taking a chunk of flesh, but nothing else. He’d been knocked unconscious and would receive staples, a nasty scar, and a concussion, but he’d be fine.

            Jason would need more time.

            All the bones in his right had been shattered. He had broken ribs, fractured collarbone, a skull fracture, and various lacerations. Despite all the physical injuries sustained, Bruce could only imagine the mental ones. He had no way of knowing what else the killer had done to him. How much worse things might be on the inside.

            There were no signs of sexual assault. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

            Bruce still hoped to God it did. He prayed that the killer hadn’t gotten that far yet, because they’d interrupted. He hoped that Jason had been spared. The guilt was crushing, the worry debilitating. He chewed his nails to the quick and drank coffee till his gut burned, begging for food or relief.

            He gave neither and ignored Alfred’s worried pestering.

            Bruce kept a constant vigil at Jason’s bedside for the first night. He was given reports on Clark’s well-being and asked that Alfred come to the hospital to sit with him. He didn’t want Clark alone when he woke. But he couldn’t leave Jason. Jason was his priority. Jason needed him.

            When Jason woke on the third day, Clark was getting released from the hospital. Bruce still hadn’t spoken to him in person, hadn’t had the chance to lay eyes on him. But he’d heard his voice over the phone and it had soothed something deeply broken in Bruce. It had calmed, where others had failed.

            He very nearly left Jason’s bedside just to be near the man. He wanted desperately to have Clark swallow him in his warmth and smell. To drown out all the fear and the ugliness of the past week. But there would be time for that later.

            Later.

            Jason was fairly incoherent the first few times he opened his eyes. By the fourth time he looked around the room, he finally locked onto Bruce.

            “Hey chum,” Bruce whispered, hunched over the bed, hands curled around Jason’s good one. Jason blinked sluggishly in response, one corner of his mouth twitching.

            “Hi.”

            Jason’s voice was a terrible scratching croak. And it was beautiful.

            “Is he—”

            “Dead,” Bruce said quietly, leaning close, pressing a kiss to Jason’s forehead, lingering probably too long. But Jason surprised him by grabbing on with that good hand and keeping him close, nuzzling into Bruce’s neck and clinging for dear life. And all the pieces, the ones that had felt fractured and or missing for the last days, settled back into place.

            There were new scars. New pains. New problems.

            But Jason was safe. Clark was safe. The JD Killer was dead.

            “You’re safe now.”

            “Thank you—” Jason choked the words out, crying mutely into Bruce’s t-shirt, “thank you for coming.”

            “I said I would.”

            Jason’s muffled laughter was hoarse, “Yeah. You did.”

           

 

 

            Clark came to the hospital when Jason was released. He brought balloons and a big card signed by everyone at the MPD and GCPD. Even a few of the FBI task force team had offered their own well wishes.

            The JD Killer was sent to a morgue at Quantico for an autopsy. There was still no identity to place with the face. He was as anonymous as he’d been in life. His legacy left behind twenty-one possible kills. They would never know for certain how many he’d actually taken. They would never know the JD Killer’s history, what made him the way he was, or the why’s. Not really.

It should bother Bruce more than it did.

            Jason slept in the backseat on the drive home while Clark and Bruce sat silent up front, holding hands. They didn’t speak, hadn’t spoken in days, what felt like centuries, but the time for talking wasn’t yet. And just sitting near, touching, was enough.

            When they got back to the manor, Alfred had clearly instructed the boys to be calm and to keep their voices down. There was an endearing _Welcome Home!_ banner that the boys had strung up in the foyer and Dick had brought Jason’s favorite sausage pizza from _Tony’s Pizza and Subs_. They ate the pizza, talked like it was Wednesday night family dinner and nothing was wrong. Bruce could almost believe it.

             Jason griped when he was told to go to bed but looked relieved when he was toted up to his bedroom to sleep by Dick.  

             Then, only then, did Bruce give into the desperation curling inside of him.

             “Bruce—do you—”

              Bruce cut him off, grabbing his wrist and tugging in the direction of where he wanted Clark. In his bedroom. On his bed. Fuck. Anywhere. As long is it was private.

             “Woah,” Clark murmured, a half-laugh slipping out of his mouth as Bruce’s pace picked up the closer they got. The minute Clark was in the door, the minute Bruce had the latch clicked into place, he was on Clark, mouth hungry. His hands found Clark’s shirt, fisted possessive handfuls, keeping Clark exactly where he wanted him and it was—oh god—it was exactly what he’d needed. It was everything he’d needed and known in the back of his mind that he’d needed but couldn’t have because everything was on the edge of falling apart and, and—

            “Bruce,” Clark whispered, pulling away, resting his forehead on Bruce’s, “Slow down. I’m not going anywhere.”

            “I—I can’t.”

            “Yes, you can,” Clark's lips found his again, deliberately making Bruce squirm when he bit and licked like they had all the time in the world. He moved off his lips, skated over Bruce’s thundering pulse and found an ear. “I’m alright.”

            “You might not have been.”

            “No. But I am,” he hummed, “And you are,” a kiss, “And so is Jason.”

             Clark nibbled on his ear, sending goosebumps down Bruce’s frame, making his legs shake and his stomach flutter. God, it felt like it had been ages since he’d been with Clark like this. Maybe it had. He couldn’t think past the foggy _need_ to be with Clark. He needed to be skin on skin, heart to heart. He just _needed._

             Clark answered the need like Bruce had said it out loud. But Bruce knew he hadn’t. Clark just seemed to know him that well. He pushed Bruce onto the bed, undressed him painfully slow, kissed him from head to toe and then made love to him like they really had nowhere to be. Like this was just the beginning of many, many more trysts between them.

              Lazy, warm, and agonizingly good.

              Bruce clung even after they’d finished and been sticky with sweat. He held on tight, nuzzled into Clark’s neck, breathed in his smell and wished the world outside his room away. It worked. For a couple of hours. They drifted, whispered a few nonsensical promises that had no fucking business being uttered from a seasoned cop’s mouth. Because they sounded lovesick and foolhardy. Maybe they were.

              Maybe Bruce didn’t care. Maybe he’d started to realize he didn’t have the time or the energy to pretend that he didn’t care about Clark like that. Because he did.

              He cared deeply.

              He—he loved Clark. Was in fact, probably irreversibly _in love_ with the Kansas native and could do nothing about it. Like a fatal disease, he’d already been infected.

              And that should frighten him because those sorts of feelings shouldn’t even be on his radar this early, but it didn’t. It only comforted him, because he could tell that Clark felt the same. They didn’t need to say it out loud for it to be true. It simply was. Sappy, dramatic, and true.  

              “Have you spoken to Jason yet?”

               Bruce shifted, pressing into warm skin, barely able to keep his eyes open any longer, “Not exactly.”

               “Did he say—”

               “No. The JD Killer didn’t. We made it on time. But there was some—he’s going to need therapy. He’s going to need help.”

               “It was a pretty fucking traumatic experience. That doesn’t surprise me,” Clark said, eyes trained on the ceiling. “I’m sorry it happened to him, Bruce. I’m sorry he got pulled in at all.”

                It was something Bruce was struggling not to feel guilty about. Something he was going to need to work through in his own personal time. Another demon, for another day.

                “Me too,” Bruce sighed, closing his eyes again, feeling sleep tug harder at him. He still felt sleep deprived and having Clark next to him was making it more difficult. Clark was warm and safe. A firm presence that left no doubts or worries in the bed. He could sleep for hours and know that Clark had his back.

               “Sleep, Bruce. I’ll still be here when you wake up. Everything will wait till then.”

               “I should probably check on Jason.”

               “He’s sleeping. He’ll still be here when you wake up too. None of this will have run away,” Clark snorted, pressing a kiss to his forehead, “We _can_ survive without you for a couple of hours, oh great and fearless leader.”

               “Smartass.”

               “I thought you liked my ass.”

               Bruce snickered, “I like it just fine.”

               “Just fine?” Clark mocked being offended, “I want a fucking sonnet written about my ass. Just fine, is not just fine.”

                “You’ll get it when I wake up, Kent. Now, kindly fucking shut your cakehole.”

                “My cakehole?”

                Bruce narrowed his eyes at Clark, “Please tell me you’ve seen Supernatural and understand to which I am referencing? Because if you haven’t, I wouldn’t mention it to Jason. He’s a diehard fan. He’ll strap you to a chair and make you binge till your eyeballs bleed.”

                Clark laughed, a great big belly laugh, and Bruce grinned at the sound of it.

               “Are you speaking from experience?”

               Bruce shivered, “You’ve no idea.”  

               The beauty of it was, Clark would probably get to know. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry I fell off the face of the Earth. I've been wallowing in writer's block and I hope this epilogue does Faceless Killer justice. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for the love!! <3 <3

            “Hold still.”

            “Don’t you fucking tell me what to do. I don’t want to fucking hear it.”

            “Bruce—” the voice was soft and meant to comfort. It was meant to calm. It wasn’t doing a hell of a good job at all. Clark shifted at the sink, adjusted his grip on the icepack and tried a weak smile. Bruce did not reciprocate it.

            “I said I was sorry, Bruce.”

            “Yes, I heard you the first five times you said it.”

            “Bruce, come on. It was a simple mistake. It wasn’t—”

            “If the next words out of your fucking mouth are that it wasn’t a big deal, I’m going to strangle you.”

            Clark sighed, dropping the icepack from Bruce’s cheek. It was already a dark angry purple and by morning, he would be sporting a shiner that would make every head in the precinct turn. Of course, after their little fiasco at the game, Clark doubted the news hadn’t already reached every square inch of both their precincts. He’d never meant to put either one of them into such an awkward or uncomfortable position. But that was exactly what they would be facing.

            “Saying I’m sorry over and over again, should only make you realize just how much I mean it. I never meant for anything like this to happen.”

            “But it did, Clark,” Bruce’s eyes looked darker than usual, maybe because he was angry. Or maybe because it was dim in the unisex bathroom they’d staked out. The storm the newscasters had been predicting would hit the seaboard, had come to roost and dark fluffy clouds were blotting out the sun.

            “We talked about not doing that.”

            Clark shifted, “We talked about being careful, yes. But I thought eventually, you’d want everyone to know. We haven’t been on the same task force in months. No one would say anything against our being together.”

            “You kissed me in front of everyone. You chose for us. I wasn’t ready.”

            “I—” Clark swallowed thickly, looked down at his mud-streaked cleats and felt his stomach shrivel, “I really didn’t mean to, Bruce. It was just second nature to lean over and kiss you. I wasn’t trying to decide for both of us. It just—it just happened.”

            Bruce turned back to the sink, flipped it on and started to wash his hands. He had mud streaked through his hair. Grass still stuck to his clothes.  

            “I’m sorry about your face.”

            Bruce shrugged a shoulder, “I swung first. It was second-nature to hit me back, right?”

            There was something about the way Bruce said that. Something that made Clark want to get his back up and maybe crowd Bruce into that sink to straighten him out. But Bruce was angry, rightfully so, and doing such things would only make him even angrier. Clark needed to let it breathe. He needed to give Bruce those crucial minutes to try and see clearly before doing something irreversible.

              So, putting on a plastic smile and his best collected exterior, Clark walked side by side with Bruce back out to the mostly empty pavilion and found that only a few stragglers were left behind. People who were hanging around to clean up from the picnic. A few GCPD remained and so did a few MPD, but mostly, no one paid Clark or Bruce any mind. They were all too busy wrangling their children and getting them back into their mini-vans before the storm hit. What was once a bustling crowd of mixed jerseys and sweaty men, was all but a memory.

            It still smelled like fried chicken, potato salad, and popcorn. Like summer. Clark had always loved the smells. Had loved this gathering of his fellow officers after the precinct baseball game more than almost any other department get-togethers.

            But there was a sour note in the air now as Bruce strode purposefully to his car, not even bothering to see if Clark was keeping up. Clark was, but that was beside the point.

            The whole drive back to the manor was silent. Alfred had to have taken the boys home almost immediately after the kiss and subsequent skirmish. Bruce didn’t appear to want to hash anything else out, so they drove with backs straight and Clark biting his tongue till he tasted copper in the back of his throat. By the time they got to the familiar gravel circle of Wayne Manor, Clark was ready to explode. He needed to talk. He needed to make this better. He needed Bruce to understand that he shouldn’t have kissed him in front of everyone, before he was ready, but that his reaction had stung. Was it just that Bruce had been caught in a relationship in front of everyone? Or that it was a relationship with _Clark_ that made him so upset?

            Bruce pulled into the garage, shut the ignition off then blew out a weary breath. “I’m sorry.”

            “What?”

            Bruce grimaced, “Don’t make me fucking repeat it, Clark. I said I was sorry. Take your bone and run with it, because I’m not saying it again.”

            “I—I wasn’t expecting that from you.”

            “I know I hurt you, Clark. I’m not blind.”

            Clark swallowed, looked down at his lap, “Yeah. You did. But I understand why. And I screwed up by putting us in that position.”

            “You wanted to kiss your boyfriend and I freaked. I shouldn’t have panicked.”

            “Why did you then?” Clark asked carefully, keeping his eyes on the dirt stuck under his fingernails. He was going to need a shower to wipe off all the dirt and grime from the field. He’d been in the outfield and with the damp soil from all the Spring rain, he was filthy.

            “Because I’ve never been with someone like this.”

            “I know.”

            “I’ve never had a relationship. Not really. And even though I’m sure about us, I just—I’m not used to being public. I still have a hard time kissing where people can see us, even off-duty.”

            “Today was off-duty.”

            Bruce snorted, “In front of every cop in both Metropolis and Gotham. That doesn’t count. People don’t see me like that and I’m not sure I want them to.”

            “Like what? Happy? In a committed, loving, relationship?”

            Clark could feel the tension in Bruce, and it made him reach across the car’s console and squeeze reassuringly on one knee. Bruce melted into the contact, his eyes fluttering closed. “Fuck, I don’t even understand why that scared me. I don’t know, Clark. I’m just sorry that it did.”

            “It doesn’t matter. It’s done now.”

            Bruce hummed, “Everyone knows you mean. I’m going to get hazed to death about this on Monday. I’ve been sleeping with the enemy.”

            “Not for long.”

            “What?” Bruce blinked open foggy gray eyes and peered in the dim cabin lighting at Clark. Clark knew this wasn’t the best time to say this either. But when else was he going to bring it up? He’d been sitting on the paperwork for weeks, biding his time, worrying over what Bruce might do. He already stayed at the manor more than he did his apartment, commuting all the way to Metropolis. They’d been dating for almost a year. He loved Bruce and Bruce loved him. This was a reasonable step, one he’d already decided. Without consulting Bruce.

            _God help him if the man felt offended about that._

“I’ve put in paperwork to transfer to the GCPD. I’ve already talked with Borden and he’s expecting me to start on the first of the month.”

            Bruce blinked, “You’re transferring? But we can’t—”

            “We can. If we tell the department and fill out the right forms. Which I already have. Spousal rights mean I get to be in the same precinct as you. Maybe not as your partner, but in the same building at least. Borden wants me in Vice.”

            “Fuck,” Bruce blinked, “Wait—spousal rights?”

            “Yeah,” Clark bit his lip, “I told Borden we planned on getting married. I know we talked about keeping that to ourselves too for a while, but babe, I really can’t—”

            “Stop. Talking.”

            “Bruce, please—”

            “Stop,” Bruce bit the word out, but it was lacking the venom Clark was expecting. It sounded strained and thick, like there were tears behind it and Clark was suddenly very afraid that he’d fucked up a whole lot worse than he’d originally thought. Until Bruce unbuckled and promptly climbed into his lap like a cat seeking warmth. Then Clark was wrapping his arms around a tapered waist and pressing sloppy kisses to the rabbiting pulse in Bruce’s neck like he’d not had the man in weeks. Which was far from accurate because they’d squeezed in a quickie before the game.

            And that should have been enough to last at least twelve hours.

            It wasn’t.

            It was a mad dash to get inside. Clark did the unthinkable and carried Bruce in through the kitchen. Bruce cursed up a storm, half-fighting to be put down, but obviously so turned on he couldn’t quite make himself get down. They scrambled up the stairs, past open bedrooms, barely aware of their surroundings as they tore clothes off. With the door firmly shut to Bruce’s bedroom, Clark poured himself into their kisses. He didn’t care that Bruce smelled like cut grass and mud, that he was lightly damp with sweat and looked a little haggard with that freshly blooming black eye. He was beautiful. And he was Clark’s. As much as Bruce might bristle at the notion of being owned, that in no way diminished the fact that Bruce Wayne belonged to Clark Kent and vice versa.

            Bruce said it easily enough when he arched and moaned beneath Clark’s hands. When he begged for Clark to be nearer, biting at skin and grabbing with bruising force.

            When they finished in a sweaty heap at the center of the bed, Clark found himself lazily seeking out Bruce’s ring finger, making a loop out of his own hands to mark it.

            “If I bought you a ring, would you wear it?”

            Bruce’s face was flushed and eyes heavy, but he was watching Clark’s hands on his with rapt attention. “Probably.”

            Clark laughed, “I suppose that’s better than hell no.”

            “I don’t like jewelry.”

            “How about a tattoo? You like those. And I like them on you.”

            Bruce had exactly three tattoos. A bat on his shoulder blade from his academy days, a rose on his hip for his mother, and the names of his children on the inside of his left bicep. Clark had traced every one of them to the point he could probably find them and trace them perfectly with his eyes closed.

            “You’d get a tattoo for me?” Bruce murmured, his eyes almost closed, voice sluggish.

            “I’d tattoo my entire body if it meant staking my claim. I love you, Bruce. You know I do.”

            “I love you too.” It was whispered, soft and downy into the sheets, but very much clear. Clark’s chest tightened with joy and he pressed into it, reveling in how good it felt.

            “And you’re okay with me coming to the GCPD?”

            “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

            No hesitation. No question. Exactly the way it should be.

 

 

 

            Jason got his acceptance letter.

            It came in the mail a week after the baseball game when the house was quiet, and the afternoon was trying to give way to evening. Bruce had the day off and had opted to stay in with Jason, to soak up a few hours of alone time while Damian was at school.

            They’d spent the day buried beneath blankets watching episode after episode of Dr. Who, eating pringles, and bingeing on M&Ms. Bruce felt a little sick to his stomach but Jason looked happy and relaxed. He looked—more like himself than he had in so very long that Bruce was willing to do just about anything. Including eating junk food until he vomited and fielding Alfred’s worried glances with casual shrugs.

            Jason had been in therapy almost the entirety of his time out of the hospital. They’d gotten him home, physically healthy, and then right in to see a shrink.

            It hadn’t been as much of a struggle as Bruce had been expecting either.

            Jason might not want to talk to Bruce or to Dick or to anyone really about what had happened to him, what he had survived, but he did want to talk to _someone_. He did want help. And he’d gotten it, diligently, painstakingly, determinedly for months. The dreams still woke the manor. The screams were so shrill they made Bruce’s hair stand on end. Jason still snuck into bed with Clark and Bruce, careful to slip into Bruce’s side where he could find warm arms and quiet comfort.

            Bruce didn’t stop him. Didn’t talk about it in the daylight hours.

            He did nothing but watch and pray. He drove Jason to his therapy appointments, took extra days off, played with his son’s hair and whispered promises of safety into his ear when Jason shook in his arms at night. He did everything he could think of to help. And they were getting somewhere, Jason was getting better, stronger every day. But he still had a long way to go.

            So, when Jason opened the letter Alfred handed over, and Jason was suddenly sitting upright, his face filling with stunned joy, Bruce was a bit—cautious.

            “What is it?”

            Jason shifted on the sofa, angling himself so he could face Bruce better, knees knocking into Bruce’s thigh. “It’s my acceptance letter.”

            “Your acceptance letter?” Bruce said carefully, eyes on Jason’s face, heart leaping into his throat without warning.

            “Yeah, I mean, I didn’t think it would come so soon and I wanted a chance to tell you first,” Jason blinked over the edge of the white letter, his eyes so very green they were painful to look at, “But I got accepted into university.”

            Bruce’s mouth smiled automatically, his frame softening as he felt the flood of conflicting emotions rush in his veins. “That’s fucking amazing, Jay. I’m proud of you, kiddo.”

            Jason snorted, looking away in embarrassment, “Jeez, old man.”

            “I mean it, Jay. You’ve worked so hard these last months and I’m really proud of you. You deserve this. I know you’re going to be great at this.”

            Jason bit his lip, looking at the paper again, “I won’t start till Fall so I’ve got time to prepare. I uh—can I still live at home? Just, you know, for now. Till I get my feet under me and uh—”

            Bruce felt his throat tighten painfully, “You applied to GCU?”

            “Yeah. It’s not my first choice, but it’s a really good school and talking to my uh, my therapist, she recommended staying close to home. Just for now.”

            Bruce could cry. Bruce actually—well, he might actually cry.

            “That’s great. That’s—that’s really great.”

            “You okay?” Jason’s brow had wrinkled and he was putting down the acceptance letter, his eyes tightening at the corners, “You’re not gonna go all fucking watery on me are you?”

            Bruce sniffed, “What if I fucking do? You gonna ruin my rep and tell everyone?”

            Jason blinked, then laughed loudly. “Jesus Christ. Nobody like you, old man. Nobody.”

            “I’m one of a kind,” Bruce cleared his throat, reached blindly for Jason and grabbed on tight, “And so are you.”

            “Seriously,” Jason’s voice sounded thick against Bruce’s shoulder, “I don’t wanna ruin my face. I tried to look nice today. Alfred is gonna flip if he sees me all splotchy and shit.”

            “You realize he’ll probably cry too. Stoically and very British of course, but he's a softy. Like most good men.”

            “Yeah,” Jason shifted, tucked his face tighter into Bruce’s neck and shoulder, not bothering to actually let go or end the hug. It was the warmest Bruce had felt all day. He could remain like this for ages. “I’m secretly a sadist and like making other people cry.”

            “Then you’ll love it when Dick boohoos on your shoulder.”

            “Yup.”

            They broke apart a handful of minutes later, settled back under the blankets and flipped Dr. Who on again. Moment over, but still tingling and warm between them.

            “Sour Patch Kids?”

            Bruce’s stomach clenched angrily at the thought of eating any more sugar. But he nodded, taking another handful because it made Jason grin and lean closer to share the bowl.

            Damian got home just before five with Dick in tow. The acceptance letter was big news and garnered Jason lots of attention that he looked a little overwhelmed with. Alfred made a cake and everyone sat at the table together, bellowing and cursing and eating.

            Clark got home a little later than usual but joined everyone in congratulating Jason just the same. He slipped into his role in their family as easily as if he’d always been doing it. Bruce felt impossibly softened by the way his children interacted and moved around Clark. And by how Clark moved around them.  _Not long from now, that man would be his husband._ The thought was--thrilling.

            By nine, Damian was in bed and the other boys had splintered off to play video games or Tim’s case, work on homework. Bruce and Clark had opted to share a few fingers of whiskey on the balcony and were just settling into their respective cushioned patio chairs when Bruce’s phone buzzed.

            He blinked down at the screen, saw his chief’s number, then sighed.

            “It’s work.”

            Clark sipped on his whiskey, eyes mirthful as they danced over the rim, “There’s no such thing as a day off as a cop.”

            “Smartass.”

            Clark shrugged, “I put in my time, Wayne. It’s your turn. Don’t worry, I’ll hold down the fort.”

            “I’m sure you will,” Bruce stood, handed his glass of whiskey to Clark, then pressed into a lingering kiss that made his stomach hollow and his hands itchy for skin.

            “I am insanely jealous right now.”

            Clark snorted, tipping back a mouthful of his drink, “Run along detective. I’ll be here when you get back.”

            “You better fucking be.”

            Clark’s mouth twitched, eyes burning like embers, “Is that a threat?”

            “No, it’s a promise, Kent.”

            Six hours later, smelling like cigarettes, city smog, and rain, Bruce crawled into bed and made good on his promise.


End file.
